The Toronto Star
Families with children who have juvenile, or Type 1, diabetes are getting a boost from Ontario’s budget.
A new program worth $12 million in 2006-07, and growing to $30 million by 2008-09, will help families purchase insulin pumps and supplies.
Ontario will now pay the $6,000 price of an insulin pump and the nearly $2,400 a year for supplies to run one. Who will gain access to the program is yet to be defined by the health ministry. There are about 6,500 children in Ontario with Type 1 diabetes.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said of all the things announced in yesterday’s budget, he is most proud of this provision for insulin pumps for young people with diabetes. Once Ontario does this, he said, perhaps every other jurisdiction in Canada will follow.
Mississauga mother Lori Smith and her son Zachary, 8, came to Queen’s Park yesterday to see the budget delivered and called the day “historic.”
Zachary has Type 1 diabetes, and has been on the pump, which he wears in a pouch around his waist, for two years. The Smith family has helped lobby the government to pick up the costs for pumps for all children in need. “We are just relieved and excited other kids will get the opportunity to use the pump,” she said.
