Canada To Aid Drug Victims

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29907, 22 August 1962, Page 13

Canada To Aid Drug Victims

(N.Z. Press Association— Copyright) OTTAWA, August 21. Canada hopes soon to put into effect a comprehensive plan for studying and caring for victims of deformities believed to have been caused by the drug thalidomide, United Press International reported.

But the medical care and training plan will be all the aid Canadian mothers will get, because Canadian law prohibits abortions unless a mother’s life is in danger. More than 50 drugdeformed babies have ' een unofficially reported bom in Canada, according to U.P.1., but because of the difficulties in getting victims’ families to come forward, the Government knows officially of only 15 cases.

after its distribution in this country for testing. Most of these women have been reported to have had normal babies.

The official said the woman was not certain that she had taken thalidomide, but “we have strong reaeon to believe she had been supplied the drug.”

Until the number of victims and their specific needs are known, the cost of the programme cannot be estimated. Officials said the Government was putting no ceiling on the amount of money It would spend. If the provinces agreed to the plan, the victims’ medical and surgical needs would be assessed and looked after first, officials said. Later would come the study of special limbs for victims, such as some born with seal-llke flippers instead of normal arms and legs. In a few years, special education programmes would be set up for them. The United States Food and Drug Administration thinks it may have turned up a case in which the death of a baby may have been linked to the testing of thalidomide in this country. Deputy-Commissi oner John L Harvey said today. He declined to identify the mother or the area of the country in which she lives He told reporters that F.DA. investigators so far had been unable to find the physician involved in the case, apparently because he was on vacation, and it was felt that no details should be disclosed until he was interviewed.

The deputy-commissioner said the woman was presumably one of the at least 207 pregnant women known to have been supplied the drug