Health

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...

Doctors and residents in northern and rural Manitoba say health care in their communities must be a federal election priority this year, as emergency rooms continue to close and patients travel farther and longer for care.The emergency room at Morris General Hospital, 60 kilometres south of Winnipeg, closed indefinitely in September 2023. It's one of several rural Manitoba ERs to shutter in recent years due to health-care worker shortages."You can go there with somebody half dying, and all it's got is a thing on the door: The emergency's closed," said Eileen Klassen, 78, who lives down the road from the hospital."It's not the doctors or the nurses. They work hard."Eileen Klassen, who lives in Morris south of Winnipeg, says the local hospital's emergency room closure in 2023 concerns her, e...

Babies and children up to age four could be breathing in plasticizers and other chemicals from their mattresses while they sleep, a Canadian study suggests.Federal regulations set limits on some phthalates or plasticizers, which are substances added to products to make them more flexible.Miriam Diamond, an environmental chemist at the University of Toronto, and her team designed an experiment to estimate how much of the compounds are released into a child's sleeping area from 16 different mattresses.In Tuesday's issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the researchers reported that two of the mattresses tested did not comply with Canadian regulations for two phthalates and two plasticizers in consumer products. The regulations are based on potential harm to human health...

A Federal Court judge will begin hearing arguments Tuesday in the case of a B.C. ostrich farm which has been ordered to cull its entire flock over avian flu concerns.Universal Ostrich is located on a rural road near Edgewood, in B.C.'s West Kootenay region, an approximately 175-kilometre drive east from Kelowna along a winding highway.Its entire flock of about 400 birds was ordered culled in February by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency after H5N1 avian flu was detected in December — but the farm managed to get its birds a stay of execution until the court could rule on the merits of the cull order.The two-day hearing, which is set to be conducted virtually starting Tuesday, is the latest development in a case that has pitted public opinion in favour of the birds against officials who sa...

Nurse Leslie Warner will never forget being taken to her local RCMP detachment in Fernie, B.C., in 2022 and charged in a social security fraud operating out of Alberta.She says she was fingerprinted and had her mug shot taken."I was like: 'Oh my God, this is my identity theft,'" Warner recalls telling police. "I did not do this."The fraud charges were dropped soon after she explained that an imposter had been using her identity since 2020, when someone hacked into her Canada Revenue Agency account and filed a bogus return in Alberta that stated tax preparation company H&R Block was her new "authorized representative."But Warner had never authorized H&R Block to file her taxes.Warner said she has been trying for years to understand how her identity — and at times her life — came to ...

Nine years ago, former B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency, in response to a sharp increase in deaths related to toxic drugs and drug overdoses. Overdose deaths had been climbing steadily since 2010; the 474 deaths in 2015 were a 30 per cent increase from the year before.Those annual numbers kept climbing, peaking at more than 2,500 deaths in 2023. More than 16,000 people have died as a result of toxic drugs across B.C. in those nine years. Although recent numbers show those numbers could be declining, officials remain steadfast in their commitment to saving lives.More than six British Columbians died per day due to toxic drugs last year."This crisis continues to have a devastating impact throughout our province, from families and communities...

Scientists collecting wastewater samples gain access to a variety of sensitive information.At the University of Guelph in southern Ontario, researchers are working to protect that data.Melissa Perreault is part of the research team focused on developing a policy to better protect Indigenous people from research exploitation, specifically through wastewater sampling. "I want to start by saying how valuable wastewater research is ... but there are other things in wastewater besides [COVID-19]," Perreault told CBC News.During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health departments used wastewater sampling to keep track of the spread of the virus across Canada.The sensitive data found in wastewater — including human DNA and prescribed or illicit drugs — can also give researchers more information abou...

On April 12, 1980, Terry Fox wrote in his diary, "Today is the day it all begins," after starting his Marathon of Hope in St. John's. On Saturday, Terry's older brother Fred Fox returned to Mile 0, the place where it all started 45 years ago, and ran the path to the city hall as his brother did years ago. "He could never have imagined what those words would mean, all these years later," said Fred Fox.On his arrival at city hall, St. John's Mayor Danny Breen placed the Chain of Office around his neck, replicating the honour given to Terry Fox in 1980. Volunteers, cancer patients and cancer researchers gathered for the occasion. Before retracing his brother's steps on Saturday, Fox had spent the week visiting schools and speaking to students about Terry Fox's cause, in a bid to encourage mor...

Brenndon Goodman was nine years old when a doctor told him he would be dead by 30 if he couldn't get his weight under control."You're going through all the issues a normal nine-year-old goes through. On top of that, also being told you're overweight, you're an aberration. For me, I felt like I was a failure," said Goodman, 30, who lives in Thornhill, Ont.He said he remembers endless — and unhelpful — appointments at weight-loss programs that amounted to cookie-cutter diet plans and shame. What finally worked was when a team of doctors, dietitians, specialists and psychologists at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children started telling him about the psychological and genetic aspects of obesity.That kind of collaborative and inclusive approach should be what all doctors and nurses take when tre...

The city's hospital networks maintain that cases of bugs and rodents haven't jeopardized patient safety, but a range of factors make keeping pests out a persistent challenge. Source link