KAMLOOPS — For many dog owners, their pet is a part of the family, and a loyal companion in times of hardship.
It’s no surprise that people will often go to great lengths to save their dogs when they get sick.
Come January, however, cancer treatments for canines will no longer be available in Kamloops.
Royal Inland Hospital’s Oncology Pharmacy will no longer be preparing cancer treatments for local veterinary clinics. It’s a service that clinics, like Riverside Small Animal Hospital, don’t have the ability to provide onsite, at least not before RIH stops providing the chemotherapy drugs.
“The cost of putting a mixing room into any facility is around $75,000,” said Dr. Matt Nicol, veterinarian with Riverside Small Animal Hospital. “The regulations surrounding chemotherapy drugs is for the safety of the people mixing them. They have to be in a separate room, that has to be vented to the outside world, that has its own sterile hood with one of these kind of sci-fi things where you put your hands inside so that you’re never in the same airspace as the drugs. That facility doesn’t exist in a community like this.”
Dog owners who have seen their pets through cancer treatments at the clinic are disappointed that the drugs will no longer be available. Mel Rothenburger’s dog, Jesse, received cancer treatments and is now cancer free.
Rothenburger said driving to Vancouver or Calgary is simply not a feasible in many cases.
“Traveling to other centres on a weekly or bi-weekly basis on top of the cost of the treatment in itself is not going to be practical for most people,” Rotherburger said. “At the least we’re hopeful for an extension of the deadline, but that has to be an indefinite extension. It can’t be for two or three months. It has to be until such time as either an alternative is found or the policy is reversed.”
B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake said the hospital was so busy with human chemotherapy patients that it became difficult to provide the service to animals.
He added Interior Health is willing to be flexible with the January 2 deadline for cutting off the chemotherapy drugs.
