The MPP who pushed for a law to make school safer for asthmatic students admits he's disappointed by where things stand a year after the law was passed.
Tuesday marked one year since Ryan's Law was passed in the Ontario Legislature, and Elgin-Middlesex-London MPP Jeff Yurek (PC) says there are still schools in the province that have not followed the law.
“The uptake of Ryan’s Law by school boards is disappointing," says Yurek. "I’m calling on the Minister of Education to take leadership and partner with the Lung Association to ensure the bill is fully implemented in the province. It is my hope that by the start of the next school year every school throughout the province will be asthma friendly as Ryan’s Law intended.”
Ryan's Law sets a standard for schools and school boards to follow when designing asthma policies. It requires them to have strategies to reduce asthma triggers at schools, educate teachers and parents about asthma, provide regular training to teachers and school employees, and maintain emergency protocols for students with asthma. That includes allowing students to keep their asthma inhalers with them, rather than having the inhalers kept in the school office.
The law was named for Ryan Gibbons, who died in 2012 after having a severe asthma attack while at Straffordville Public School. He wasn't able to get to his inhaler quickly enough because it was kept in the school's office.
His mother, Sandra Gibbons, joined Yurek at a news conference at Queen's Park on Tuesday.
“The pain of losing my son will never go away," says Gibbons. "But I believed that by fighting for the passage of Ryan's Law I could help to prevent another family from going through that ordeal. Now I hear from parents that their children's school hasn't even heard of Ryan's Law and I find that hard to understand. Someone needs to explain why Ryan's Law has been put on the back-burner."
George Habib, president and CEO of the Ontario Lung Association, says the province needs to provide more funding to make sure teachers and school staff get the training they need to recognize and respond to a breathing emergency.
“Schools are holding their breath, waiting for direction and support,” he says. “We have worked with Ministry of Education staff and other partners to provide resources to school boards but many schools are still unaware that these materials are available or don’t know how to access them.”
