News/Health

Measles cases are surging across Canada, so it might not come as a surprise that nearly 70 per cent of Canadians surveyed recently agreed that childhood vaccinations should be mandatory.The Angus Reid Institute polled nearly 1,700 Canadian adults online between May 20 and May. 23, asking them if proof of immunization should be required for kids to attend daycare or schools.Sixty-nine per cent said yes — an increase from last year, when only 55 per cent of respondents agreed that vaccinations should be mandatory for kids.Maxwell Smith, a bioethicist and associate professor at Western University's School of Health Studies, says the figure suggests mandating childhood vaccinations is not as divisive as once thought. "Given what we just experienced with COVID and controversies around vaccine m...

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.As Canada's measles outbreak continues to grow, the country is at risk of losing its measles elimination status — a bar set by the World Health Organization. "The risk is substantial," said Dr. Sarah Wilson, a public health physician with Public Health Ontario who has been tracking the measles outbreak in that province. Ontario is now reporting more measles cases each week than it once saw over an entire decade, Wilson said. "It is a very different situation than what we experienced in the last decade since measles elimination was achieved," she said.Measles elimination is reached...

Singer Billy Joel said Friday he was recently diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus, a brain disorder. He said it's affected his hearing, vision and balance.The brain disorder can cause problems with walking, bladder control and thinking.In a statement, Joel said he's undergoing specific physical therapy and has been advised to pause performances while he recovers. Here are some facts about the condition.What is hydrocephalus?Hydrocephalus is an abnormal buildup of fluid within the brain. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which is produced in the brain's four hollow ventricles or chambers, protects and cushions the brain and spine and normally gets reabsorbed into the bloodstream.But when the flow of CSF to the outside of the brain is interrupted or blocked, too much builds up.  What happe...

WARNING: This article may affect those who have experienced​ ​​​sexual violence or know someone affected by it. When Emma Bockner was eight, she was prescribed medication for ADHD. Then as a teen, she started experiencing problematic substance use."There were a lot of things that happened in my childhood that left me with feelings of inadequacy," said Bockner, 26, who lives in Richmond Hill, Ont. She's survived emotional and sexual abuse, and struggled with an eating disorder.When Bockner graduated from high school, she saw her friends moving on with fulfilling lives, as she found herself with a part-time job, often sitting in her room alone, drinking and doing drugs."It took me about six months to get into treatment, a couple of months to get into a group home," Bockner recalled.Waitlists...

The late-stage cancer diagnosis of former U.S. president Joe Biden has some medical professionals wondering how the disease was able to go undetected when his health had been under intense scrutiny near the end of his presidency.In a statement on Sunday, Biden's office said the 82-year-old has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and that it's spread to the bone. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, which is considered to be the most advanced.Prostate cancer cells are usually graded on a scale of 1 to 10 under the Gleason system.This grading system involves looking at cells under a microscope and measuring how abnormal they are and their likelihood of spread. The higher the grade, the more aggressive the cancer.According to Biden's office, he scored a 9, which would suggest that his cancer...

Members of the World Health Organization adopted an agreement on Tuesday intended to improve preparedness for future pandemics following the disjointed global response to COVID-19, but the absence of the U.S. cast doubt on the treaty's effectiveness.After three years of negotiations, the legally binding pact was adopted by the World Health Assembly in Geneva. WHO member countries welcomed its passing with applause.The pact was touted as a victory for members of the global health agency at a time when multilateral organizations like the WHO have been battered by sharp cuts in U.S. foreign funding."The agreement is a victory for public health, science and multilateral action. It will ensure we, collectively, can better protect the world from future pandemic threats," said WHO Director Genera...

Canadians who need a hip or knee replacement could get the surgery more quickly — without adding to health-care budgets or opening more operating rooms — if central waitlists were created, the author of a new study says. The findings, published in Tuesday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, suggest it's significantly faster to add patients to a central list where they can see any surgeon in their area, compared to each surgeon having their own waitlists. Right now in Ontario, a primary care provider, such as your family doctor, refers you to a surgeon or physiotherapist to decide whether surgery is needed. If it is, you'll be put on one surgeon's waiting list, which could be long or short. Often, it's a long wait — in Canada, only two-thirds of patients receive their hip r...

A baby born with a rare and dangerous genetic disease is growing and thriving after getting an experimental gene editing treatment made just for him, according to the doctors who treated him.Researchers described the case in a new study, saying he's among the first to be successfully treated with a custom therapy that seeks to fix a tiny but critical error in his genetic code that kills half of the infants with the rare disease. Though it may be a while before similar personalized treatments are available for others, doctors hope the technology can someday help the millions left behind even as genetic medicine has advanced because their conditions are so rare."This is the first step towards the use of gene editing therapies to treat a wide variety of rare genetic disorders for which there ...

The World Health Organization has reduced its management team by half and will have to scale back operations, its director-general said on Wednesday, four months after the United States announced it was leaving the agency and cutting funding."To be blunt, we cannot do everything," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a budget committee meeting ahead of the body's annual meeting next week.President Donald Trump said the U.S. was leaving the agency on the first day of his return to office in January.Under U.S. law, a one-year notice is required before the country, the biggest financial backer of the WHO, can leave, as well as the payment of all fees. That money is outstanding.Tedros said the body and its member states must make difficult choices about what to prioritize, given a proposed 21 pe...

A global study from UNICEF suggests many Canadian kids are unhappy, with social struggles such as bullying and difficulty making friends among the sources of their anguish.UNICEF's 19th Report Card suggests one in five youth in Canada face frequent bullying, one in five are lonely and one in four struggle to make friends.It blames bullying in particular for a drop in life satisfaction reported by 15-year-olds, down three percentage points to 76 per cent since 2018.That marks Canada's biggest slide among categories examined by the report, which compares the well-being of Canadian children to those in other wealthy countries between 2018 and 2022.Despite being among the 10 wealthiest countries studied, Canada ranked 19th out of 36 countries overall, landing toward the bottom end for adolesce...