Mandy Wood deserved better. So do the women of Nova Scotia

On Christmas Day, Mandy Wood died.

Wood was a beloved radio host based in Truro. She was also a woman failed—systematically and repeatedly—by Nova Scotia’s healthcare system. Mandy died from a rare form of vulvar cancer that went misdiagnosed for more than a year. Mandy waited for two years to see a gynecologist, and by the time she received an accurate diagnosis, it was too late.

In her final interview with Global News, Mandy made a simple, and yet devastating, request: “I need there to be something to come out of this, something positive, because I cannot have gone through this for nothing.”

Honouring Mandy’s wishes means telling the truth about what happened to her and why. It means acknowledging that Mandy is not the first woman in this province to die while waiting for access to appropriate, timely women’s healthcare. And unless we confront the structural failures that led to her death, she will not be the last.

Since the Progressive Conservatives formed government in 2021, women across Nova Scotia have increasingly spoken out about barriers to gender-specific care. Long waits for gynecological services. Delayed or dismissed symptoms. Limited access and devastatingly serious delays to access specialists in breast and reproductive health. A growing number of women describe feeling unheard, unseen, and treated as second-class patients.

This concern has grown loud enough that women are now organizing. A new grassroots coalition has emerged to help advocate for systemic change. Their message is clear: women’s health inequity is not anecdotal, it is structural.

To understand how we arrived here, we must look beyond tragedies like Mandy’s and examine the restructuring of the provincial health authority and the lack of governance oversight.

One of Premier Tim Houston’s first actions after his 2021 election was to fire the CEO of the Nova Scotia Health Authority and dissolve its entire board of directors. This was framed as a decisive move to “fix healthcare.” Nearly four years later, Nova Scotia Health still has no oversight by a board of directors.

Instead, the province’s largest public expenditure is overseen by an interim CEO who has now been in place for close to five years. Interim leadership is never meant to be permanent. Yet here we are, operating without independent oversight, without a governing body, and without meaningful accountability to the public.

Boards exist for a reason. They provide oversight. They ensure performance metrics are met. They ask hard questions. They represent the public interest. 

Prior to 2021, Nova Scotia Health’s board included physicians, health researchers, financial experts, and members of the general public. It also included racial and regional diversity at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed deep health inequities—particularly for African Nova Scotian and Indigenous communities.

That diversity vanished overnight.

Today, Nova Scotia Health’s leadership is largely homogeneous with minimal representation from the communities most impacted by systemic health inequities. At the same time, the public is asked to trust that all is well, often on the basis of carefully curated testimonials from staff, presented by senior management, rather than transparent, independently reviewed outcomes.

The Premier frequently speaks about accountability when criticizing Nova Scotia Power, an organization that does have a functioning governance structure. Yet he remains silent on the absence of accountability mechanisms within the health authority itself.

Mandy Wood’s story forces us to ask uncomfortable questions. What happens when women’s pain is dismissed? When rare cancers aren’t recognized? When systems lack oversight? When leadership answers upward to one notoriously arrogant political leader, rather than outward to the public?

Recent actions by the Houston government (particularly its confrontations with Mi’kmaw communities over treaty rights) have further eroded trust among marginalized groups who already experience poorer health outcomes. These issues are not separate. Governance, equity, and access to care are deeply connected.

The most serious question we need to ask is who will hold Nova Scotia Health accountable for deaths like Mandy Wood’s? 

Over the coming months, I intend to continue writing about women’s health equity in Nova Scotia and to share the stories of women navigating an increasingly inaccessible system. But Mandy Wood’s death must be our starting point.

Because Mandy asked for meaning.

Because healthcare systems don’t fail by accident.

And because women in Nova Scotia deserve far better than silence, delay, and excuses—especially when their lives depend on it.

Liz LeClair is an activist and advocate based in Nova Scotia.

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