Hello everyone. I hope you are all enjoying the nice fall weather we have been having.

I want to address the recent hospital closures we have been experiencing this month, which is due to a series of circumstances.

Our two doctors, Doctor Havai and Dr Askari were on preapproved leave for educational purposes. We had two locums scheduled to cover their leave; however, they were unable to attend, leaving us in a situation where we had to go on bypass and use a virtual physician to sustain some services.

We want to thank Cassandra for keeping the clinic hours available and supporting long term care. Also, we thank the Watrous Physicians for their support over the past couple of weeks with on call and Nurse Practitioner support to ensure move ins to Central Parkland Lodge could be maintained.

I want to assure everyone that this was a rare occurrence with the new doctor starting and needing some time off.

I really want to bring to light how fortunate we are in Lanigan that the future for health care looks bright. We will be a community with two doctors as well as a Nurse Practitioner, expanding to three doctors in the new year when Dr Honey Adibi joins the team.

We have a full complement of great well trained, dedicated hospital and long-term care staff in Lanigan.

For a community of our size, we are very fortunate as there are lot of communities that don’t have a doctor. We all know the challenges that health care across the country is going through - it is not just happening in our province.

- Mayor Tony Mycock