health

Friday, May 30, 2014

Friday, May 30, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, May 30, 2014

Maternal, child-health initiative renewed with $3.5B pledge

Canada is committing another $3.5 billion to improve global maternal, newborn and child health, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today on the sidelines of the government’s health summit in Toronto.

It’s a huge step toward the goal of ending the preventable deaths of mothers and children under the age of five, a cause the Conservative government declared a “flagship development priority.”

Harper made the announcement alongside his wife Laureen, Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan, Tanzania n President Jakaya Kikwete, Melinda Gates and International Development Minister Christian Paradis.

“It is good work, it is great work, it’s work that is making a difference between life and death, and so I believe that this work must not stop,” Harper said.

The $3.5-billion pledge is more than twice the $1.1 billion originally promised at the 2010 G8 summit, and it builds on the Muskoka Initiative’s total $2.85-billion commitment from Canada (80 per cent of which has, so far, been disbursed).

“This new phase from 2015 to 2020 will focus on the best programming, innovation and partnerships from the past four years and it will be given increased financial resources,” Harper said.

The new commitment maintains the Muskoka Initiative’s target areas of health, nutrition and disease.

It will also focus on newborn health within the first month of life, as well as step up immunization efforts to tackle preventable diseases.

Liberal critic for international co-operation Kirsty Duncan said she is “pleased” the government is renewing its funding.

“We want to see that stable, long-term commitment,” she said, adding that these are not problems that can be resolved over only a few years.

However, she said “the devil’s in the details” and many questions still remain, including whether a push for reproductive health will be included.

The Official Opposition critic for international development Hélène Laverdière expressed the same sentiment.

“It’s like a chair missing a leg to some extent,” she said.

Laverdière said the theme of the summit is to save every woman, every child, but pointed out there are 47,000 women who die each year from unsafe abortions.

Reproductive health includes family planning, contraception and the contentious issue of abortion.

When asked by reporters, Paradis evaded the question of why abortion isn’t included in the next phase.

“We are active where we make a real difference. When I think about nutrition — 45 per cent of the cause of the death — I think that this is the kind of areas that we have to put the emphasis,” he said following Harper’s announcement. (Source: CBC News)

 

Tuesday August 20, 2013

Tuesday August 20, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 20, 2013

National health care strategy needed for ‘silver tsunami’

Most Canadians think this country needs a national strategy for seniors health care, believing such a plan would help keep seniors in their homes as long as possible, according to a new poll released by the Canadian Medical Association.

The Ipsos Reid poll was released along with the association’s annual report card on health issues. It found that nine out of 10 Canadians feel that the entire health care system could be improved by keeping seniors at home as long as possible, to help lighten the load on hospitals and nursing homes.

It also revealed that only 37 per cent of Canadians have confidence in the ability of the current system to care for our aging population. As well, three-quarters of respondents said they were concerned for themselves about whether they would have access to high-quality health care in their retirement years.

Almost 80 per cent said they were concerned about having access to an acute care system, such as good quality hospital care, while almost an equal number worried about finding home care and long-term care.

Jane Meadus, a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, says she’s not surprised the poll revealed so few Canadians feel confident about how they will be cared for in their senior years. “It shows there’s an anxiety about what’s happening now and what’s going to happen in the future about the availability and quality of the health care that we’re expecting for our seniors,” she told CTV’s Canada AM Monday.

Meadus says there are a lot of vulnerabilities in the current health care system when it comes to seniors, including a shortage of long-term care beds in most provinces and an insufficient system of home care. (Source: CTV News)

Saturday November 3, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday November 3, 2012

End of Daylight Saving Time fills insomniacs with dread

The end of Daylight Saving Time this weekend mostly brings an extra hour’s sleep to a sleep-deprived society — but actually hurts the people who need sleep most.

This is the night when people with insomnia suffer even more than usual, then have to listen to their friends and family talk about how refreshing it is to catch up on sleep.

This paradox comes from the fall ritual of turning back the clock one hour. At 2 a.m. Sunday we officially move back to 1 a.m., adding one hour to the night.

In effect, we create a single 25-hour day, to be balanced out by a 23-hour day next spring.

For a society that tends to stay up too late at night, this is a bonus: just this once you can fall asleep at midnight, get up at 7 a.m., and still get eight hours’ sleep.

But for an insomniac, it’s the same poor-quality sleep as usual, followed by a day with an extra hour of being awake. In addition, it upsets their “circadian rhythm,” the mental cycle of day and night that tends to operate poorly to begin with in people with insomnia.

“Where people are normally getting an extra hour of sleep or sleep opportunity, for someone with insomnia this could actually be worse,” says Dr. Elliott Lee, a sleep expert at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre.  (Source: Ottawa Citizen)

 

Wednesday May 9, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday May 9, 2012

Lower fees forced on Ontario doctors

Sending a signal that will reverberate throughout Ontario’s broader public sector, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals have broken with their conciliatory past by forcing a tough new deal onto Ontario’s doctors.

Less than two weeks after negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association fell apart, and despite requests by the OMA to call in a conciliator, Health Minister Deb Matthews announced Monday that a package of cuts to doctors’ fees will be unilaterally imposed through regulations, retroactive to April 1.

The abrupt manner in which the cuts were unveiled, amid claims by the OMA that Ms. Matthews has misrepresented discussions at the bargaining table, sets an aggressive tone for other negotiations – including with the province’s teachers. And it epitomized the shifting focus of a government once known for its big-spending ways.

The 37 fee-schedule changes announced Monday focus heavily (although not exclusively) on a relatively small number of high-paid specialists – mostly radiologists, ophthalmologists and cardiologists – and by the Liberals’ estimate will save $338-million in 2012-13 and $440-million in 2013-14. But sources say there are more broad-based cuts to come, to get the rest of the way to a two-year freeze in doctors’ total pay envelope.

Still on the table is the elimination of a “retention bonus,” which the Liberals had brought in to dissuade doctors from leaving the province. That benefit currently peaks at $5,000 every three years for doctors who have practised at least three decades.

The government also wants to revive so-called clawbacks of doctors’ fees once they exceed a level at which their ratio to overhead costs becomes skewed. (Source: Globe & Mail) 

 

Thursday March 22, 2012

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 22, 2012

Ornge mess sullies Ontario Health Minister’s standing

By the time it’s finished playing itself out, when the schemes have all been unravelled and the books fully opened up and the police investigation concluded, the sorry mess at the air-ambulance service Ornge could wind up costing Ontarians tens of millions of dollars.

The much bigger cost – the one that the province really can’t afford as it tries to wrestle down a $16-billion deficit – might be the loss of an effective health minister.

Deb Matthews will keep her job for the foreseeable future; she’s too well-regarded in government circles to be a sacrificial lamb. But as she stood there on Wednesday, trying to keep her cool during the brutal press conference that followed Auditor-General Jim McCarter’s damning Ornge report, it was hard not to see her as a diminished force.

Two years ago, shortly after being named to her post, Ms. Matthews won a very public fight with pharmacies to find big drug savings that had eluded her predecessors. The communication skills and the iron will that she displayed on that file gave some hope that she’d be able to win other, tougher battles to limit health-care costs.

But with those battles now looming large in the form of nascent contract negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association and a push to restructure the way hospitals are funded, Ms. Matthews has lost much of her political capital.

Until recently seen in the health sector as a force to be reckoned with, she’s now perceived as vulnerable. While there’s a sense that she’s a good minister dealt a bad hand, there’s also an awareness that – having failed to stop Ornge from abusing public dollars – she’s lost her ability to rally the public behind her by presenting herself as a tireless defender of the public interest. (Source: Globe & Mail)