Health

Hamza Abu Shabab cringed in pain as his mother pulled off his shirt and eased his bandaged head back onto his pillow so she could apply ointment to his small, burned body. The seven-year-old suffered third-degree burns across his head, neck and shoulders when, frightened by an Israeli airstrike, he spilled a hot plate of rice and lentils onto himself in his family's tent in southern Gaza last month. His recovery has been slowed by Israel's blockade, now in its third month, which bars all medicine, food, fuel and other goods from entering Gaza. His burns have gotten infected — the boy's immune system is weakened by poor nutrition and supplies of antibiotics are limited, said his mother, Iman Abu Shabab."Had there not been a siege or it was a different country, he would have been treated and...

Health officials say measles infected 197 more people in Ontario over the last week as the highly contagious disease emerged in new parts of the country.That brings the province's tally of probable and confirmed cases to 1,440 since an outbreak began in October.Public Health Ontario's measles report says there have been 101 hospitalizations, including 75 children. Eight patients have been in intensive care.Nova Scotia and Northwest Territories each reported measles cases earlier this week, marking their first since this outbreak began.Alberta reported yesterday that its overall case count had reached nearly 300 since mid-March, including three patients under the age of 18 in intensive care.Saskatchewan updated its cumulative count to 27 cases today, a day after Manitoba reported it had rea...

14 hours agoNewsDuration 2:22Bill 103, tabled by the CAQ government, would limit how close safe drug use sites can be to schools and daycares. But parents living near the Maison Benoît Labre in the Sud-Ouest borough say the bill doesn't solve the immediate problems they’re facing. Meanwhile, groups that run these sites worry the new rules would make it more difficult to help those in need. Source link

The foundation of the new long-term care facility in Chester, N.S., is nearly complete, a milestone in a development the community has wanted for nearly two decades.The new Shoreham Village will replace the aging building next door, which — at 50 years old — is outdated and would have needed significant changes in order to meet modern health and safety standards for the industry."The biggest problem with the building is not so much just the infrastructure, it's just the fact that there's shared rooms," said Charbel Daniel, CEO of Shoreham Village and the Northwood Group of Companies, which manages the facility."The entire long-term care sector is moving away from the shared-room model to independent rooms, something that we've witnessed through COVID as part of safety reasons to make sure ...

Mark Carney's promise to lead a Canadian economic transformation includes a renewed focus on artificial intelligence, which the new prime minister listed as a key pillar of his plan.Experts say they are encouraged by Carney's campaign pledge to invest in the technology. But they say that after establishing itself as a leader in the early decades of AI development, Canada risks falling farther behind other countries if his government doesn't deliver."They care about the right stuff and I think they are generally on the right track," said Lawrence Zhang, head of policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's Centre for Canadian Innovation and Competitiveness."I don't know if they're going to deliver or not. But it's extremely important that they do deliver."During the elect...

Bill 103 would bar supervised drug use sites from operating within 150 metres of a school or daycare. If passed, the bill will require two of these sites to move, including the Maison Benoît-Labre in Montreal. Source link

Health Minister Sylvia Jones defended on Wednesday the province's approach to the ongoing measles outbreak as new infections increase sharply and criticism mounts.The latest public health data released last week shows 223 new infections across Ontario in the previous week.That brings the total number of people in the province who have fallen ill from the virus to 1,243 since October. That includes 84 people who have been hospitalized, 63 of them children.Jones said Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore has been helping local public health units where the outbreaks are occurring. Moore directed public health units more than a year ago to focus their efforts on childhood vaccinations.When asked if the province's approach was working, Jones said: "I believe it is.""Look, there's no...

A new scientific study has found no evidence of an undiagnosed mystery brain disease in New Brunswick, says a report published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, known as JAMA.Instead, an independent reassessment of 25 of 222 patients diagnosed by Moncton neurologist Alier Marrero as having a "neurological syndrome of unknown cause" concluded that all of the cases were attributable to well-known conditions.These include common neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, functional neurological disorder, traumatic brain injury, and metastatic cancer, says the report.The researchers also do not believe exposure to something in the environment, such as the herbicide glyphosate or heavy metals, made the patients ill."The broad range of very diffe...

When Diane Chandler found a unit in Surrey's Foxglove supportive housing building in 2023, the main thing her children hoped for was safety.The 60-year-old had spent years battling depression and addiction, surviving on disability payments as she moved between temporary shelters and her car.And the Foxglove — a multi-use building designed to house people living with complex mental health and substance use problems — came praised by municipal, provincial and federal politicians, including former Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and B.C. Premier David Eby.But none of those protections would save Chandler, who died from an overdose of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in her room in the Foxglove almost a year ago.Adding to the pain of their mother's loss, Chandler's children say they discovered...

A drug squad investigator said it was "shocking" to learn how 18-year-old University of Victoria student Sidney McIntyre-Starko came to possess and then ingest the toxic drugs that killed her.Saanich Police Department Const. Ben Scoones made the comment while testifying on the seventh day of the B.C. Coroners Service inquest into the January 2024 death of McIntyre-Starko.Scoones was tasked with investigating potential drug trafficking on the UVic campus a few days after the first-year student died of a fatal fentanyl overdose in a UVic student dorm."It's such a shocking story that somebody found drugs and then decided to use these drugs as a group without knowing what these drugs were or where they came from," he told the coroner's court jury.  In testimony last week, a female UVic student...