News/Canada/Montreal

This is the first of two articles that will focus on the issue of drug overdoses in Quebec, where the situation is heading and what needs to be done to curb this trend.The 911 caller was in a state of shock.A little after 4 p.m. on Sunday Sept. 10, 2023, the caller stumbled upon a group of five people and most of them, if not all, looked either unconscious or dead.According to Urgences-santé's call records, the first team of paramedics arrived at the corner of Ontario and St-Dominique streets in downtown Montreal in two minutes and four seconds. At least four more ambulances and two advanced-care emergency vehicles followed soon after.There was also a supervisor on site to help manage the chaos.The final tally: six overdoses — not five — and two of them were fatal.A scene like this one is ...

When Nidal Zaqout arrived in Montreal last September from Gaza, he hoped to have a chance to rebuild his life.But safety didn't mean the struggle was over.He soon realized that he and his family would only receive public health coverage for three months after arrival — despite having fled Israel's deadly attacks on Gazans and their homeland. "It's a bad feeling, I'm thinking about everything every day," Zaqout said from the living room of his West Island home, where he lives with his parents, two of his sisters, his wife and his two children."I have a big family, big responsibility." Zaqout fears what might happen if someone in his household becomes ill. His father suffers from severe knee pain and his mother from migraines and issues with her back, shoulder and neck.Without Quebec health ...

Among the dozens of people who testified at a coroner's inquiry into the death of Normand Meunier, Claude Labelle may be the only one who really understands what he went through. Meunier, a 66-year-old quadriplegic Quebec man, requested medical assistance in dying after developing a severe bedsore during a four-day stay in the ER at Saint-Jérôme Hospital last year.The inquiry has heard over the last several weeks about the unbearable pain he suffered, and how the system failed him before he died in March 2024."In my opinion, it was the right thing to do," Labelle said of Meunier's decision in an interview with CBC News after his testimony Tuesday."It was very, very, very hard for him — a big, severe wound." Like Meunier, Claude Labelle is quadriplegic and prone to bedsores. He told the cor...

Doctors at a medical clinic in Kingsey Falls, a town in central Quebec, say they are contemplating closing their clinic and pivoting out of family practice — or Quebec altogether — if a bill allowing the province to regulate how physicians are paid is adopted as it is written.Bill 106, tabled earlier this month, would link up to 25 per cent of physicians' pay to their performance in an effort to get them to take on more patients.But in a statement posted to their social media, doctors at the Kingsey Falls medical clinic said the new rules would impose unattainable performance targets on them and reduce their ability to deliver quality care to patients. "We can't take on more patients if we don't have more resources or a system that's more efficient and productive to be able to take good ca...

Gloria Borrelli and her mother Francesca choked back tears as they took turns hugging and kissing Mikhael Esterez on the cheek, repeating the words "thank you" over and over again outside Montreal's Sacré-Coeur hospital. After more than a week of searching for the Good Samaritans who delivered life-saving CPR to Gloria's dad, 87-year-old Sabato Borrelli, the mother and daughter finally met Esterez and another woman who played a key role that day, but who wanted to keep her identity private. Borrelli had collapsed after going into cardiac arrest while out on his daily walk on May 15 near Jarry Park."You guys are superheroes for us," Gloria told them. On Monday, the two strangers met Borrelli inside his hospital room where he continues to recover from the ordeal. He managed to wave and say t...

Cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses have been increasing in Quebec for more than a decade, and experts say climate change is partially to blame.With increasing temperatures, ticks are becoming more established, especially in southern Quebec, said Kirsten Crandall, a scientific adviser with the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ).And with host animals moving north, be they birds or deer, ticks are covering a broader range, she said. This is especially true for black-legged ticks which can transmit Lyme, she added."I think we will definitely be continuing on that rise in the number of different tick-borne diseases," said Crandall. "Lyme disease obviously being the one with the most case numbers."Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium transmitted by the bite ...

A Montreal family is looking for the Good Samaritan who saved octogenarian Sabato Borrelli's life after he collapsed and went into cardiac arrest while out on his daily walk, out of his home in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough.Doctors told the family a stranger performed CPR on Borrelli for about 20 minutes before paramedics arrived and took over. Sabato's daughter, Gloria Borelli, believes her father was likely near Jarry Park when the incident happened around 3 p.m. on May 15, but has been unable to confirm the exact location as of yet. Gloria says she wants to meet the person who gave her more time with her father."This gentleman, or woman or child — I don't know who saved my father," she said. "All they wanted was this person to have a chance and he was given that chance."Borrelli cel...

Visibly moved, the chief of Raphaël André's Innu community stood to speak after the Quebec coroner presented her findings Thursday on the 2021 death of the 51-year-old unhoused man."When you knock on the door one minute before closing, and you get an answer like 'no room'? Come on, forget the rules and come in, my friend, come in, my son. That's a human being," said Réal McKenzie, the chief of Matimekush–Lac John in northern Quebec.McKenzie's emotional reaction followed the release of coroner Stéphanie Gamache's report into André's death in January 2021. The Innu man was found frozen inside a portable toilet, just steps from the shelter he frequented — one that had reduced hours during the COVID-19 pandemic.The death was avoidable, the report concluded, and it highlighted a need for more r...

A Quebec coroner is recommending that diphenhydramine — an antihistamine and sedative sometimes used to sleep better — should be better managed in pharmacies after the overdose death of an 18-year-old man south of Montreal in December 2023.The young man, whose identity is not revealed in the report made public, died of acute diphenhydramine poisoning at his home in St-Mathias-sur-Richelieu.On the morning of Dec. 11, 2023, the man was found by his mother in his bed, unconscious and laying on his back.Toxicological analysis found the man had a lethal level of diphenhydramine in his blood.The drug is the sedating ingredient in some over-the-counter antihistamines including the brand Benadryl, among others.The coroner found the circumstances surrounding the death raise questions about the unco...

Staff at a hospital in Saint-Jérôme, Que., say the emergency room was not prepared to handle a patient like Normand Meunier, a quadriplegic man who developed a severe bedsore during his stay in January 2024.Days into the coroner's inquiry into the death of Meunier — who chose to pursue medical assistance in dying as a result of the massive wound — staff who treated him testified about his care and the hospital resources available at the time.Meunier spent four days on a stretcher in the Saint-Jérôme Hospital's emergency room after he arrived with a respiratory virus.His partner, Sylvie Brosseau, says without access to a special mattress, Meunier developed a major pressure sore on his buttocks that eventually worsened and stretched down to his bone and muscle. It made his recovery and progn...