Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

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First Canadian clinical trial of any COVID-19 vaccine is launched in Quebec City

Tuesday, July 14th, 2020

On Monday, six volunteers rolled up their sleeves to receive shots at a study site operated by Syneos Health in Quebec City, officially launching the first Canadian clinical trial of any COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine, developed by Medicago Inc., a Quebec biopharmaceutical company, has shown positive results in animal studies. But this is its first test in humans.

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Ottawa should listen to police chiefs. Drug use is a health care problem, not a crime

Monday, July 13th, 2020

There is a cresting wave of support for decriminalization, and its benefits for society. 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy backed decriminalization… Canadian health officials have also long worked towards these changes… Decriminalization and a safe supply (prescribed by doctors, to address the deadly toxicity of street opioids) were also key recommendations last year from an all-party House of Commons health committee.

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Lasting programs needed to cure our social wounds

Thursday, July 9th, 2020

COVID-19 is laying bare the consequences of four decades of neoliberal social policy choices… The poverty, homelessness and precarious work we tolerate and try to bury under inadequate social supports. The entrenched historical structural inequities like racism and sexism we sweep under the carpet but are the driving determinants of who is most negatively impacted by COVID-19 and most other illnesses.

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How does Ontario respond to people in crisis — and how should it?

Friday, June 26th, 2020

… a big part of this new model has to be better mental-health care in general, so fewer people end up getting to that crisis point in the first place. The current model produces tragic outcomes, yes, but it also doesn’t work for a lot of people who never have a tragic outcome, per se, but need help they don’t get. And this is especially true with racialized or otherwise marginalized communities.

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Police shouldn’t be answering mental-health calls

Thursday, June 25th, 2020

At this point… there’s no excuse for politicians to refuse to act… there are models elsewhere that could usefully provide direction. One that’s receiving lots of attention… involves teams of medical professionals and crisis workers responding directly to calls involving people in mental crisis, and rarely has to resort to police backup.

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Ontario to fully fund nursing homes despite lower occupancies

Wednesday, June 24th, 2020

Restricting admissions to single- and double-occupancy rooms will exacerbate a chronic shortage of long-term care beds in Ontario… the government’s ban on new admissions to ward rooms will eliminate 4,303 beds, representing 5.5 per cent of the province’s total… those who no longer need acute care but have nowhere else to go, reached a historic high of 5,300 as of Monday.

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We need to take Canada’s approach to drug addiction and burn it to the ground

Friday, June 19th, 2020

… as policies go, prohibition and jail time have been utter failures as deterrents. Mr. Perrin, the author of Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada’s Opioid Crisis, released this year, says politics – fear of a backlash from the electorate – have made our leaders afraid to do the right thing… this has allowed “an unregulated criminal underworld to dictate what is in the drugs that people are taking, forcing those people to play Russian roulette”

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Let’s face it, Canada: Even drinking in moderation can be dangerous

Tuesday, June 16th, 2020

Alcohol is a health disaster in Canada… In 2017, alcohol put as many people in hospital as heart attacks did, and 13 times as many people as opioids did. And we haven’t even touched on social ills such as drunk driving, domestic violence and absenteeism in the workplace… At the same time, Canadians are getting mixed signals on booze: from health experts, from their governments and from society.

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Why for-profit nursing home operators will likely leave the sector of their own accord

Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

Reinventing LTC means a restoration of the minimum staffing levels scrapped by the Mike Harris government in the 1990s. It means replacing or retrofitting nursing homes according to 21st century design standards. It means “in-sourcing” housekeeping, cooking and other services that have been outsourced to part-time and casual workers and contractors, the use of which impairs teamwork and continuity of care… What’s required is a multibillion-dollar megaproject.

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It’s time to expand Canadian medicare, and make it truly universal

Saturday, June 6th, 2020

Canadians have cradle-to-grave insurance for services from a doctor or hospital. But dentistry? Drugs? No. Denticare and pharmacare aren’t part of medicare… Getting to truly universal health insurance, covering all required health services, doesn’t necessarily mean doing it on medicare’s government-runs-it-all model. A number of countries with more extensive and successful health systems rely on a regulated private sector to ensure that everyone is covered.

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