A national journal for pharmacy professionals has honoured the owner of Yellowknife’s Sutherland’s Drugs for his actions during the city’s August 2023 evacuation.
Pharmacist Aaron LaBorde received the public protector award from Pharmacy Practice + Business magazine for his “life-saving work” managing medication as the city shut down in the face of an oncoming wildfire.
“After pulling together an emergency power and communications system – including a satellite internet connection, a generator, extra cellphones and fuel – LaBorde evacuated his staff to safety in Alberta while he remained behind to manage the medication needs of the thousands of citizens and emergency workers who remained,” stated a news release announcing the award.
LaBorde found himself working alone “throughout the most intense period of the wildfires, providing the correct medication and advice to patients from other pharmacies (and even from other provinces) for whom he had no access to medical records or prescription files, and arranging creative solutions for getting crucial medications into an evacuation zone.”
Those solutions included using essential workers to piggyback medication into smaller communities, and ferrying supplies to and from Yellowknife’s airport himself, the magazine reported.
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“You just do whatever you can to help,” LaBorde was quoted as saying.
“If that means working at 100-percent capacity for 12 hours a day for almost three weeks in a row, that is just what you have to do to try to ensure people get what they need.”
