Health

Kayla DeMong fought tears as she described the dire conditions on the front lines, pleading for more help from the province as staff at the harm reduction site she leads try to keep up with the recent spike in overdoses."My staff here cannot do this anymore. This week they've reversed 23 overdoses just here," DeMong, executive director  of Prairie Harm Reduction (PHR), said on Thursday.DeMong's comments come in wake of 67 overdoses and one suspicious death reported by the Saskatoon Fire Department from March 9 to March 11. On Wednesday, the government activated the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre (PEOC) — something it said will help support and co-ordinate the province and organizations on the ground like PHR.The day that announcement was made, DeMong said PHR staff were mitigating ...

The province's chief medical officer of health is urging Ontarians to make sure they are immunized against the measles, amid the most severe outbreak in the province in more than a decade.In a statement Friday, Dr. Kieran Moore said there have been 350 cases of the virus in Ontario since late October — with 173 of those infections reported within the last several weeks — and 31 related hospitalizations."Over 96 per cent of cases in Ontario are among individuals who are unimmunized, or have unknown immunization status, and were exposed in their community or while travelling," Moore said. He added that a majority of infections are concentrated in the southwestern part of the province among unvaccinated people."This is the most measles cases Ontario has seen in over a decade. It is critical w...

Health Minister Adriana LaGrange is alleging the former CEO of Alberta Health Services was unwilling and unable to implement the government's plan to break up the health authority,  became "infatuated" with her internal investigation into private surgical contracts and made "incendiary and inaccurate allegations about political intrigue and impropriety" before she was fired in January. The claims are contained in the minister's statement of defence filed Thursday in Edmonton Court of King's Bench.The document denies allegations made by Athana Mentzelopoulos, the former CEO, who filed a $1.7 million wrongful dismissal lawsuit against LaGrange and Alberta Health Services last month. The claim, which contains allegations of political interference from a staff member in the office of Premier D...

More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.The provincial government announced in October it would provide the RSV shot, Abrysvo, for free to seniors 60 and up living in care homes and it would offer a limited supply to those 75 and up living in the community.That age range is now expanded to include all Albertans 70 and up. And the province is also funding the vaccine for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Albertans who are age 60 and over.The change came into effect on Monday."[For] all of our patients that come in, and I see they're eligible, I'm letting them know … because it's important," said Sarah Perez, the pharmacy manager at CurisRx Pharmacy in the Calgary community of Mahogany.She's concerned many customers don't realize they're eligible for the prov...

Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis. "The biggest thing was fear and uncertainty," Dr. Justin Hall told CBC Toronto. Hall is chief of emergency medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where Canada's first case of COVID-19 was identified on Jan. 25, 2020."Our staff responded extremely well to not knowing what was going to happen and every day looked a little bit different," he said.March 11 marked the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization's declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic. In the days that followed that announcement, the provincial government declared...

The Homalco First Nation is holding its fourth funeral in six months this week for a young community member who died from a drug overdose.The north Island Nation is the third Indigenous group on Vancouver Island to declare a state of emergency due to the toxic drug crisis. It is joining calls for federal and provincial government leaders to take urgent action and provide resources to help them deal with it."This crisis is a direct result of the aftermath of residential schools and the lasting generational trauma that continues to devastate Indigenous communities," it said."The toxic drug epidemic is not just a Homalco issue—it is a direct consequence of colonial policies that fractured families, suppressed culture, and left lasting scars on Indigenous people."In March 2024, the Gwa'Sala-Na...

From finishing high school to caring for patients in the hospital, here’s how five people navigated the beginning of the pandemic. Source link

The Alberta government wants to cut more than $400 million in the fees it pays to doctors, according to a confidential memo obtained by The Canadian Press.The Feb. 18 memo, sent by Alberta Medical Association head Dr. Shelley Duggan to member physicians, says Alberta's health ministry seeks cuts to more than 800 physician billing codes to save $400 million because of budget pressures.Those codes lay out how much money is paid for specific procedures, sometimes based on the amount of time that a doctor spends with a patient."What has become clear in the last few months is that Alberta Health is looking to address its budget shortfalls through the physician services budget," Duggan writes."While we hope Alberta Health will reconsider its current approach, we wanted to advise members that it'...

Ontario is seeing a massive surge in measles cases as an ongoing outbreak spreads in the province among mostly unvaccinated people.Public Health Ontario is reporting 372 total cases since an outbreak began on Oct. 28, 2024. That's a jump of 195 cases since the agency's last report on Feb. 27.The spread has resulted in 31 hospitalizations, including one child who required intensive care. Of those who were hospitalized, 30 were unvaccinated and one person's immunization status was unknown.The public health agency described the latest numbers as being a "sharp increase," attributing the outbreak expansion to transmission among unimmunized children and teens. CBC Radio's Just Asking wants to know — what questions do you have about measles? Fill out the details on this form and send us your q...

Two people died a little over an hour apart in Victoria on Monday, Victoria police and the B.C. Coroners Service have confirmed. An outreach worker says the city's enforcement of anti-sheltering bylaws has made it more difficult for support workers to help those struggling on downtown streets and blames their deaths on drug overdoses.The B.C. Coroners Service says a man also died in downtown Victoria on March 8 and that the cause of all three deaths is still under investigation. On Tuesday, Island Health issued an advisory of an increased risk to those using unregulated substances on the South Island, as "drug poisonings are increasing in Greater Victoria."Karen Mills, founder of Peer 2 Peer Indigenous Society, says she's never seen so many deaths within the local street community as she h...