The high cost of FASD

Congratulations to Shelagh Marchenski and Don Fuchs and the work they have done while at the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba. Their report, at a conference this week in Vancouver shows that the costs to our health care system and our education system for children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders are very high in Manitoba.

In our Manitoba Liberal Party report of June 2005, we came to a very similar conclusion - that the cost of FASD to our provincial treasury is huge. See http://www.manitobaliberals.ca/documents/Healthy_Kids_Minority_Report.pdf
or you can find it by googling SIX LOST YEARS - Jon Gerrard.

In our report we looked at the extra costs associated with FASD in the Justice System, in Child and Family Services and Housing, in Education and in Health Care. We came to an overall cost estimate to the provincial treasury of between $426 and $924 million per year. This amount is staggering, and we concluded as did Don Fuchs when he said at the conference "Our model clearly shows because FASD is preventable, it would make sense to move more money into prevention."

As Manitoba Liberals, Kevin Lamoureux and I have invested a lot of time dealing with FASD. Back in 1999, when Neil Strohschein interviewed me in Neepawa shortly after I had been elected Liberal leader, I emphasized then the importance of preventing FASD. Neil, by the way, won an award for the interview.

Over the years since then Kevin and I have introduced measured to make FASD a reportable condition and to have much better approaches to prevention including labelling alcoholic beverages (as we do with cigarettes) with a warning about FASD, and good signage about FASD everywhere alcohol is sold. Sadly, the NDP have never supported these measures. And, even through attention to FASD is much better than it was in 1999, and some increased funding is now in place for diagnosis and treatment, we could still be doing much better in Manitoba.