Health

In the wake of the Vancouver festival tragedy that left 11 dead, several injured, and people around the world grieving, B.C.'s premier said there will be a review of the province's mental health legislation to ensure it's working the way it's intended.The premier has also announced that Friday, May 2, will be a provincial day of mourning for the victims and their families.On Saturday night, a 30-year-old man drove an SUV into a crowd of people at a street festival, just as organizers were winding down activities. The festival, called the Lapu-Lapu Day Block Party, was being held to celebrate the contributions of the Filipino Canadian community. The man has since been identified as Kai-Ji Adam Lo. He has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder. People lay flowers at a memoria...

Filipino-Canadian nurse Glesy Banton-Victoria says she had planned to attend the Lapu-Lapu Day street festival in Vancouver on Saturday, but took a nap instead, exhausted by a funeral earlier in the day. When she learned that a vehicle sped into a crowd of festival-goers at the Filipino community event, she says she was stunned by the horrific details, thinking, "Is this real?"Banton-Victoria says she's seen many dead bodies in her job as a veteran emergency room nurse at a Surrey, B.C., hospital, but expects she would have frozen in place if she had witnessed Saturday's carnage."It hits home because it is home, the Filipino community," said Banton-Victoria, born in Legazpi, a city in the southeast Philippines.Police said Wednesday that 11 people had died, including three members of a fami...

Strong winds knocked the power out at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, leaving the intensive care unit and surgery block in the dark for over an hour. The facility’s backup generators weren’t functioning properly. Source link

Premier Tim Houston is going ahead with an election promise to eliminate parking fees at health-care sites in Nova Scotia, starting Thursday morning.The move was a promise from all three parties in the last provincial election, but came with concerns that parking is already an issue in busy locations including the IWK Health Centre, Dartmouth General and Victoria General. In a news release Wednesday, Houston said people have been eager to see the change. "Nova Scotians shouldn't have to worry about parking fees when they're sick and seeking health care or caring for our loved ones," he said.The release said people using the lots will need to get tickets validated to ensure they are patients, visitors, or staff.It added that "specific details surrounding the free-parking initiative could va...

B.C.'s privacy watchdog has taken the unusual step of issuing a court order compelling the province's Northern Health Authority to respond to freedom of information requests about the conditions at a long-term care facility it operates in Fort St. John, B.C.Caroline Alexander says she made the requests as a member of the resident and family council at the Peace Villa, the only long-term care facility in the city of approximately 21,000 people in northeastern B.C.Councils are meant to advocate for residents and families at care facilities and work with operators to make improvements.Over the years, the Peace Villa council says it has heard and observed issues that include rooms being too cold for residents and a lack of snacks between meals.But Alexander says they've largely been stonewalle...

People flourish when all major aspects of their life are good, but a new global study suggests that isn't the case for young adults in many high-income countries.That surprised the study's co-lead. Based on previous research in the field, Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard University says he was expecting middle-aged people to report to feeling worse about their physical and mental health, relationships, income, work and more.Not necessarily so, according to the 200,000 adults in 22 countries who responded to the Global Flourishing Study, the results of which were published in Wednesday's issue of the journal Nature Mental Health"Perhaps one of the more troubling features of this data is that we find when we aggregate across the 22 countries, flourishing tends to increase with age so that the yo...

Making lifestyle adjustments could help you cut the risk of developing a stroke, dementia or late-life depression all at the same time, according to new research that has identified 17 overlapping risk factors for these brain-related conditions.Addressing even one of these risk factors, which range from high blood pressure to loneliness, can help with some of the others, researchers say. For instance, taking up biking to increase your physical activity could help with high cholesterol and high blood pressure, which are also risk factors. "This is actually quite a feel-good story about how much of these conditions could potentially be prevented," Anthony Levinson, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., who studies brain health, told CBC News. "The number of people with dement...

The 911 call placed by a dorm-mate as University of Victoria student Sidney McIntyre-Starko was suffering a fatal fentanyl overdose was played for the jury on day two of the coroner's inquest into the 18-year-old's death.Known only as "Student 2," the dorm-mate, McIntyre-Starko and another female, "Student 3", had all snorted what was later determined to be a mix of cocaine and fentanyl in a bathroom of UVic's Sir Arthur Currie student residence.Within minutes of ingesting the drugs, McIntyre-Starko and Student 3 both passed out, started having seizures and started turning blue, according to testimony. The names of Student 2 and Student 3 are under a publication ban.The call to 911 runs almost 16 minutes. Confusion over the name and location of the dorm takes up the first 3 ½ minutes of th...

A class action lawsuit against Canada for failing to provide adequate housing on First Nations land is being heard in Federal Court this week in Winnipeg.St. Theresa Point First Nation in Manitoba and Sandy Lake First Nation in northwestern Ontario filed the lawsuit in 2023. Over 100 First Nations have opted in to the class action.The statement of claim alleges Canada has "deliberately underfunded housing on reserves," while simultaneously isolating First Nations by imposing restrictions on their ability to provide housing for themselves.The First Nations' legal team says this is the first case to consider the federal government's obligation to provide adequate housing for First Nations."The housing crisis on reserve is a national shame," said St. Theresa Point Chief Raymond Flett in a new...

The mother of Sidney McIntyre-Starko, the 18-year-old who died of a fentanyl overdose in a University of Victoria dorm room last year, gave heart-wrenching and pointed testimony on day one of the coroner's inquest into her daughter's death.Dr. Caroline McIntyre said the university "lied" and put out a "completely false" timeline about the night her daughter died in January 2024.McIntyre, an emergency room physician, said despite claiming otherwise, the university never contacted Royal Jubilee Hospital to identify Sidney after she was taken there by ambulance. Instead, her daughter was listed as an unidentified person during the time emergency room staff were trying to save her life."I didn't make it there," said McIntyre. "She was unidentified, alone, and on a ventilator."McIntyre said she...