The Nova Scotia NDP offers another amazingly innocuous ingenious plan to improve health care if it wins the provincial election on 9 June. To reduce chronic disease rates, it will set up two ongoing gabfests—a council and a task force—and it will “work closely” with medical professionals. The sheer genius of NDP leader Darrell [...]

An all-night negotiation session resulted in a tentative agreement between the Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses’ Union and the provincial government.  No prizes for guessing who’s patting himself on the back.
Williams says phone call led to tentative deal with nurses
Newfoundland and Labrador’s premier said Wednesday it was his late-evening phone call that broke the deadlock between [...]

The Nova Scotia election campaign is barely two days old, but already voters are knee-deep in political claptrap.  The feeble health-care proposal from provincial NDP leader Darrel Dexter takes the cake—so far.
Mr Dexter has a series of brainstorms to alleviate recurrent closures of emergency rooms at Nova Scotia hospitals:  Hire an “expert” advisor/co-ordinator to act [...]

Three of the four students at King’s-Edgehill School, Windsor, Nova Scotia, with confirmed cases of swine flu have now recovered and are out of quarantine.
Joe Seagram, headmaster of King’s Edgehill private school in Windsor, provided the update Monday, a day after the four cases were confirmed.
Seagram said some parents were keeping their children home and [...]

CBC reports that four cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Nova Scotia, all in Windsor, right next to my home of Falmouth.
Nova Scotia’s chief public health officer, Dr. Robert Strang, said Sunday the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg confirmed late Saturday that four young people in the province are recovering from “relatively mild” [...]

An epidemiological study published in the April 2009 issue of the European Journal of Public Health concludes that 1957 honour killings of women occurred in Pakistan between January 2004 and December 2007—about 20 percent of all homicides.
The study was led by Dr. Muazzam Nasrullah of the Aga Khan University in Pakistan. An excerpt is [...]

Scientists at the Université de Montréal have discovered that impulsive young men are more likely to drive under the influence of cannabis (DUIC) and more likely to be involved in motor vehicle accidents.
“We observed that dangerous driving behaviours are interrelated. Individuals scoring high on impulsivity or sensation-seeking scales demonstrated an elevated risk of driving under [...]

Medical scientists have identified a link between chronic usage of marijuana and an obscure severe vomiting syndrome.
Marijuana, a commonly abused drug among high school and college students, is linked to a severe form of vomiting syndrome and compulsive bathing behavior. This form of severe vomiting sickness is increasingly recognized with widespread abuse of marijuana. The [...]

Pope Benedict XVI has ruffled the feathers of Western public health officials for saying that condom distribution exacerbates the problem of AIDS—even though scientific studies back the pope’s position.
And I thought public health officials are interested in helping people to avoid getting sick.
The United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) in a 2003 study indicated that condoms [...]

Stun gun shock to head may cause seizures, doctors warn — CBC Health News, 17 March
h/t: Darcey at Dust My Broom

Just in time for Lent, France’s Department of Health has recommended that everyone stop drinking wine in order to reduce the risk of cancer.
“The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged,” say guidelines that are drawn from the findings of the National Cancer Institute (INCA). A single glass of wine per day will raise [...]

A few days ago, it was reported that a prayer room used by Christian nursing students was ordered closed at The Children’s Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. Now Christian nursing students are being targeted at another hospital in Lahore.
Two female Christian students of Fatima Memorial Hospital’s nursing school in the Pakistani city of Lahore, have been [...]

From our “Every cloud has a silver lining” department:
MD Retirements Stalled
Doctor shortage (and early retirement) over thanks to the stock market
[...]
According to Manfred Purtzki, a Vancouver financial adviser, the average physician-held portfolio has shrunk by approximately 30% in thelast year.
The Medical Post has heard from many doctors, particularly those nearing retirement, who say as a [...]

The administration of The Children’s Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan, ordered closed a Christian prayer room used by nursing students. A Christian official then locked a room formerly used for the same purpose by Muslim nursing students.
In a rare development, a Christian hostel warden of a Nursing School located at the premises of the Children’s Hospital in [...]

Six newly built rooms at Atlantic Canada’s largest children’s hospital, the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, are being renovated for use as office space.  The rooms being transformed into offices are, moreover, the most desirable spaces on the unit—with views overlooking a large tree-filled green space in Halifax’s south end.  (Map here.)
Several patients’ families wrote [...]