News/Canada/New Brunswick

An advocate for New Brunswick patients suffering from unusual neurological symptoms is calling for the retraction of a recent scientific report that found no evidence of a mystery brain disease in the province.Katherine Lanteigne, the former executive director of BloodWatch, is alleging research bias and privacy breaches in the study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA Neurology.Lanteigne said she has written to the University Health Network's research ethics board in Toronto and to the Horizon Health Network and its MIND Clinic in Moncton. She intends to file formal complaints of research misconduct as well.She has asked the University Health Network, or UHN, to issue a formal apology for allegedly "flagrantly violating the privacy and dignity ...

As a large blue and purple flag was raised at Moncton's City Hall on Monday, Caroline Jose stood underneath it smiling, arm in arm with her 15-year-old son, Louis.Jose has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and her son, Louis Hébert Chatelain, is autistic and also has ADHD.Both of them are the reason Canada's first neurodiversity pride flag was raised in New Brunswick."It felt like I was belonging to a community that I never felt before," Jose said. "That's what I wanted, so to me it's very important."Jose, the national co-ordinator for Neurodiversity Pride Day in Canada, says she hopes other provinces will follow suit and hoist their own flags in time for next year's day of recognition. (Katelin Belliveau/CBC)The flag, which includes a white kite and small infinity signs on its tail...

Dr. Donald Craig was an intern at the old General Hospital in Saint John on a snowy night in January 1968 when a doctor asked him for help.The doctor had to deliver a baby at nearby St. Joseph's Hospital, but a woman at the General was also about to give birth. That child was three months premature and expected to be stillborn."Can you handle this?" the doctor asked.Craig had delivered babies before, but only under the supervision of a doctor or a resident. So he grabbed a book on human labour and began to review it. Then a nurse came and told him the baby was breech — something the doctor hadn't mentioned. So he went back to his book to look that one up. A few hours later, a nurse came to take him to the delivery room."She screams at me, 'Craig, she's ready, she's pushing and she's crying...

Some nurses will be asked to move into different parts of the health system, according to the premier, in a bid to address issues with hospital waits and primary care access.Premier Susan Holt said the regional health authorities have made similar shifts before — notably, during the COVID-19 pandemic.This time, she said, it's being done to address long-standing issues, noting 12-hour waits in emergency rooms as an example. "We need different results in health. New Brunswickers are demanding that they get timely access to care, that they get the primary care that they need," Holt said.WATCH | 'A lot of registered nurses' are impacted, Opposition leader says:Some nurses asked to take different jobs to fill health system gaps, premier saysOpposition members criticized the government Friday fo...

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...

Dyllan Taylor Humphrey spent most of a recent Saturday walking the streets of Moncton in search of her homeless younger brother.Eventually, she found him in the parking lot of a convenience store, digging through a garbage bag."It's a strange thing to love somebody with an addiction, but it's a crazier thing to walk a moment — not in their shoes —  but in their environment," she said.Her brother, whom CBC News has agreed not to name, has struggled with drug addiction for 12 years and been homeless since last fall. Taylor Humphrey lives in Belleisle, about 150 kilometres southwest of Moncton. When she heard from people who've been keeping an eye on her brother that he wasn't doing well, she drove to the city to make sure he was alive."I felt scared and just disbelief that this is how he's l...

Dr. Sophia Halassy couldn't be happier. The 32-year old bilingual obstetrician-gynecologist is settling into a new job at the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre in Moncton, helping to tackle a years-long waiting list of patients. This is a homecoming for Halassy, her husband and their two young daughters. After more than a decade of medical school, residency and employment in the United States, she was eager to get her family back on Canadian soil.While Halassy had long harboured hopes of returning to her native New Brunswick, it was the swing to the political right in the U.S. that provided the final push, she said. The reversal of the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion in the U.S., was a turning point for her."That was in 20...

Horizon Health has unveiled what the Holt government is calling the first of 30 promised collaborative care clinics that aim to transform the delivery of primary care in New Brunswick.Horizon's existing clinic on Fredericton's north side will expand this summer to take on 1,600 more patients using a "family health team" model developed by the health authority. It will give patients access to an even broader range of health professionals within the clinic, who will be able to treat more problems and steer more people away from expensive emergency care at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital."If I take care of a patient well in my practice, the chance of them ending up in the emergency department for preventable issues is very, very small," said Dr. Ravneet Comstock, who is helping ove...

After sustaining a spinal cord injury in a motor vehicle accident, Josh Nevers is learning to walk again, even though he doesn't have much feeling in his legs.A patient at the Stan Cassidy Centre for Rehabilitation at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton, one aspect of his physiotherapy sessions has especially made a difference: a robotic suit  called an exoskeleton, or more fully, the EksoNR Robotic Exoskeleton."It feels pretty amazing to walk with it again because you're actually moving your legs like you are walking," Nevers said."I hope it gets me so I can use my leg braces again."Physiotherapist Erica de Passillé said the exoskeleton allows patients to get more steps in than they normally would be able to. (Michael Heenan/CBC)Physiotherapist Erica de Passillé said the exo...

When Susannah McKenzie-Sutter heard her cousin in Ontario needed a kidney transplant, the 28-year-old Saint John woman didn't hesitate to offer one of hers.She hasn't kept in close touch with McKenzie Smith in recent years but has fond childhood memories of spending summers with her "cool older cousin." Preliminary blood tests showed she's a good match.But McKenzie-Sutter quickly learned her plans could be thwarted because she's one of thousands of New Brunswickers without a family doctor.The hospital in London, Ont., where the transplant would be done, told her she cannot donate — or even get tested to confirm she's a good candidate — without having a family doctor or a nurse practitioner.WATCH | 'That was a big, big shock.' Cousin’s gift of life-changing kidney almost blocked by family d...