Health

This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.Measles infections are ticking up and up across multiple provinces, with more cases already this year than all of 2024.Local public health alerts of new cases come with detailed descriptions of the person's whereabouts before they were diagnosed.We're told which hours and minutes a passenger spent in airports in Vancouver, Toronto, and Fredericton, how long other patients were in an emergency department north of Toronto or family health clinic in eastern Ontario, and just how long someone visited a sit-down chain restaurant in Quebec's Laurentians.The announcements raise a couple ...

North Bay has confirmed its first case of measles since 1995 as numbers in Ontario continue to rise.The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit made the announcement on Friday.The risk to the public is low, but it is taking the matter very seriously, health unit officials said in a news release issued Friday."Measles is a highly contagious virus that spreads through the air and can remain in the air or on surfaces for up to two hours after an infected person has left the area," said Shannon Mantha, the health unit's executive director of clinical services and chief nursing officer."Although the local risk of infection remains low, the large measles outbreak in southern Ontario shows how quickly the virus can spread. We have connected with the individual and their close contacts and are ...

The province’s health minister’s office estimates there will be more than 640,000 no-shows in 2025. But some medical experts say charging patients isn't the right approach. Source link

The annual death toll of people experiencing homelessness in British Columbia has nearly tripled in just a four-year period, according to the B.C. Coroners Service.A new report says at least 458 homeless people died in 2023, up 23 per cent from the year before, when 373 died. The new toll was also nearly three times the 155 deaths reported in 2020.Since 2016, 1,940 homeless people have died in B.C., according to chief coroner Dr. Jatinder Baidwan."The data speaks to the tragic reality of the struggles many face in our communities throughout B.C.," he said in a statement.Homeless deaths appear to be closely related to the toxic drug crisis. According to the coroners service, of the 458 homeless deaths recorded in 2023: 86 per cent were due to "accidental unregulated drug toxicity." 9...

The British Columbia and federal governments have signed a four-year, $670-million pharmacare agreement, giving universal access to contraceptive and diabetes medications. The plan will support nearly 550,000 B.C. residents with diabetes and provide 1.3 million people with a range of contraceptives. It will also improve access to diabetes devices and supplies.Federal Health Minister Mark Holland told a news conference Thursday that while people often talk about the cost of such a plan, the expense of not giving someone with diabetes the medicine they need could be blindness, loss of a limb or even death. He said it is "devastating" to hear about cases where someone wasn't able to adhere to what doctors prescribe because they can't afford it, which leads to "some terrible outcome" that shou...

Alberta RCMP have launched an investigation into Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the allegations of political interference and potential conflicts of interest within its procurement practices.In a statement Thursday, RCMP confirmed that the preliminary review of a complaint received on Feb. 6 has now moved into a formal investigation."Following a review, the RCMP has begun an investigation into the matter. As this is an ongoing investigation, no further details are available at this time," the statement said.On Feb. 12, the former CEO of the provincial health authority, Athana Mentzelopoulos, filed a $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit against AHS and the province.In her claim, Mentzelopoulos alleged she was fired in part because she'd launched an investigation and forensic audit int...

University of Calgary researchers are leading a national surveillance system, tracking respiratory virus trends among Canadian children who seek care in hospitals, from coast to coast.The program, known as SPRINT-Kids, involves 15 pediatric hospitals in eight provinces, and is designed to track a range of infectious diseases, including RSV, influenza and COVID-19.It is also monitoring adverse reactions to immunizations and vaccine effectiveness.The data, collected for the Public Health Agency of Canada, is reported weekly, providing a real-time perspective on which infections are active, who is most at risk as well as transmission patterns and hot spots, according to the University of Calgary."It can serve as a sentinel warning system to identify when we are starting to see increases acros...

Health officials in Peel Region are warning that the public may have been exposed to a measles case at Pearson Airport, a hospital and a walk-in clinic in Mississauga last week.In a statement, the region said the measles case was confirmed on Tuesday, with the individual infected recently travelling internationally.The public may have been exposed at the following locations, they say: More than 100 measles cases have been confirmed in Ontario so far this year. Of those cases, 18 children were hospitalized, none of whom were immunized.Public health officials have been urging people to get vaccinated for the highly infectious disease, which was declared eliminated in Canada in 1998.Peel officials say anyone who believes they were exposed should confirm whether they have up-to-date vaccinatio...

British Columbia health officials say another travel-related measles infection has been confirmed in the Lower Mainland in a resident who visited Southeast Asia. Fraser Health says in a statement that the case is unrelated to an infection last month involving a resident of the Vancouver Coastal Health region who was also infected after a trip to Southeast Asia.It says the new case involves a Fraser Health resident, and health officials are directly following up with people known to have been exposed to the virus.The statement says members of the public might have been exposed to measles if they were in the Royal Columbian Hospital emergency department from 2:30 p.m. on Monday to 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Measles is a highly infectious disease transmitted by airborne spread, but the statement s...

A small cube snakes around a blank canvas, trying to paint as much space as possible and eliminate other cubes trying to do the same.It's called Paper.io 2 and is one of the games nine-year-old Jamie Dermody plays most often on his tablet in his Toronto home.Jamie's mother, Sarah Dermody, says she tries to protect him in a world full of screens with thousands of apps at his fingertips. She says she checks the app store rating of each game he asks to download and monitors his screen time."You're trying to do your best as a parent," she said. "There's always that fear … there could be a misstep."A Marketplace investigation has pulled back the curtain on how some mobile games, which seem to attract children, use loopholes in rules protecting kids' data — allowing marketers to build advertisin...