Health

When Nathanael Rafinejad first moved to Montreal, they loved the city's nightlife and worked as a bartender and a waiter while studying business management.But after catching COVID-19 in January 2022, the 29-year-old is now mostly confined to their apartment."I feel completely cut off from the world most of the time," said Rafinejad. "I can't walk anymore. I cannot stand for more than a few seconds at a time. I can't sit for a long time. I have to use a wheelchair every day."Rafinejad is one of thousands of Quebecers with long COVID, a chronic condition that can prevent once healthy, active people from functioning properly.Rafinejad is worried they'll never get better.When they first got sick, it initially felt like the flu. But by the fourth day, the fatigue was so intense, Rafinejad said...

Ontario's system to support people with developmental disabilities is "on the verge of collapse" because of low funding, according to several agencies that have formed a coalition to call on the provincial government to act. According to the coalition, 52,000 Ontarians are on waitlists for developmental supports and services, including about 5,000 in eastern Ontario and Ottawa.Melanie Groulx is among those waitlisted. She's an Ottawa resident who has autism and high support needs, and she's been on the emergency waitlist for supportive housing for four years.Her mother, Carrie Groulx, said one question haunts her: "What's going to happen to my child after I'm gone?"Groulx blamed underfunding for her daughter's long wait and the lack of programs, and the coalition agrees."We are starting to...

Conversations are happening in Nova Scotia about developing the first midwifery education program east of Quebec.Documents released to CBC News under freedom of information laws show correspondence between provincial officials in recent months that mention Mount Saint Vincent University and Cape Breton University as possible locations.It's welcome news to midwives in Nova Scotia, who have been advocating for a midwifery education program for years."We need to be growing our own midwives here and we need to be supporting midwifery to grow," said Liz Fraser, a registered midwife and spokesperson for the Association of Nova Scotia Midwives, in an interview.She said having a midwifery school in Nova Scotia would create a pathway for new midwives, and it could act as a recruitment tool for midw...

Two people have died at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton, Ont., due to an outbreak of invasive group A streptococcal disease (iGAS), according to Halton Region."At this time, we are aware of two deaths connected with this iGAS outbreak," Halton Region's public health team said in an email Friday evening."Keeping every member of our community safe and healthy is a top priority. We are working closely with the facility and provincial partners to manage the outbreak and ensure appropriate infection prevention and control measures are in place."The public health team said there are no deaths associated with an influenza A outbreak also occurring at the jail.Brian Gray, spokesperson for Ontario's Ministry of the Solicitor General, which has not confirmed the deaths, said in a state...

The former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says major funding cuts to the agency could lead to more cases of diseases like paralytic polio and malaria. In an interview airing Sunday on CBC's Rosemary Barton Live, Samantha Power described the consequences of the Trump administration's decision to gut the agency's funding."There's really no words," Power, who was the head of the agency during the Biden administration, told chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton."The estimates are now 200,000 more cases of paralytic polio," she said of the impact of the administration's cancelled USAID contracts."Malaria increases, probably as many as 166,000 deaths per year."Power hugs a person after laid-off USAID workers cleared out their desks and collected pe...

Retired nurse Valerie Alderson doesn't find herself thinking back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic anymore, but when someone brings it up, "it's a flashback of what has happened."That includes the death of her 82-year-old dad, Lloyd Hodgins, who was sent to the hospital after breaking his hip in a fall and died not long after of COVID-19 complications, in November 2021, "all alone, without anybody," because of pandemic rules at the time restricting hospital visitors. "Both my sister and I were vaccinated. We could have had our masks on, visors on, gown on, gloves on to be with him," said Alderson, 63."I always think it's important that when you have a loved one go … for someone to be there, whether it's to hold their hand, to wipe their face, to sing a song, to read poetry, whate...

Stem cell researchers are trying to reverse a deadly genetic variant that's plagued families in this province for generations. Those who carry the mutation say the medical research is straight out of science fiction. Source link

Health officials in British Columbia say two new travel-related cases of measles have been confirmed in the Lower Mainland, bringing the number of those recently infected to four.Fraser Health says both infected people travelled in the same group from South Korea as another person whose measles infection was identified earlier this week. These cases are 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.Officials have also expanded a list of locations where members of the public might have been exposed, including Vancouver's airport, a supermarket in Burnaby and a restaurant in Coquitlam.WATCH | Another 2 measles cases crop up in Lower Mainland: More travel-related measles cases confirmed in ...

On a weekday at the world's largest refugee camp, dozens of women and men form two surging queues, pushing to reach the front of the line to get their official aid registration cards processed.The crowd is made of refugees from neighbouring Myanmar's persecuted Muslim minority Rohingya community, recently arrived at the sprawling complex housing more than a million people in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh."They are all Rohingya who have arrived here in the last month. They need more support," said Abu Osman, a program manager at an NGO called Agrajattra, which provides vaccinations and maternal, mental and community health services to thousands in the camp. "But now the support has stopped, so this is very challenging." He is speaking about the recent executive order from U.S. President Donald Tr...

In defence of the Cialis and Viagra he was accused of passing off as "natural health" remedies, Yan (Andy) Zhang claimed he took one of the products himself — "almost daily."The owner of four Lower Mainland sex shops said he had "no adverse reaction" to the medicine that he sold as a "reliable traditional herbal formula" called "Harmony."But the disguised erectile dysfunction drugs did earn Zhang a stiff penalty this week when a B.C. Provincial Court judge slapped his company with a $1-million fine in a landmark decision for advertising, packaging and selling a drug in a false, misleading or deceptive manner.According to Judge Bonnie Craig, the case is precedent-setting — "the first known decision in Canada involving the sentencing of a corporation for this offence."'"The vulnerability of ...