Climate change disasters require emergency plans for dialysis patients, experts say

When catastrophic floods severed a bridge and washed away or closed highways in southern British Columbia, Mitchell Dyck and other patients needing regular life-saving dialysis had to be flown to hospital by helicopter.

When catastrophic floods severed a bridge and washed away or closed highways in southern British Columbia, Mitchell Dyck and other patients needing regular life-saving dialysis had to be flown to hospital by helicopter.

The flooding caused by record-breaking rain in November 2021 shut down every route to the rest of Canada and made it impossible for Dyck to make the 25-minute drive from his home in Chilliwack to the dialysis unit of the Abbotsford Regional Hospital.

Dyck, now 25, was receiving overnight dialysis three times a week because his kidneys did not filter waste and excess fluids from his blood due to a genetic disease diagnosed a year earlier. He said a nurse called him and others to say they should head to the Chilliwack airport to board a helicopter, but the anxious patients encountered "chaos" there and he arrived at the hospital just in time for his treatment.

"It was a little bit concerning, and my family was definitely concerned too with whether I was going to be able to get there," Dyck said of the scramble for treatment during a climate disaster that forced nearly 15,000 residents in several communities out of their homes and killed five people in a landslide.

While some dialysis patients were put up in hotels, Dyck stayed with his grandparents in Abbotsford until portions of Highway 1 were open to traffic two weeks later. After receiving dialysis for nearly two years, Dyck had a kidney transplant in August 2022 and now takes eight medications, including immunosuppressants and drugs for high blood pressure that he always stocks in case of an emergency.

A 2022 Environment Canada study suggested that climate change made the B.C. floods at least twice as likely and it's possible that similar events will increase as greenhouse gases keep entering the atmosphere.

The likelihood of more disasters, including wildfires and droughts, has nephrologists calling for better emergency planning across the country to ensure that uniquely vulnerable dialysis patients have access to treatment without which kidney failure could cause life-threatening conditions or death.