Across the world, hundreds of millions of people who menstruate have gotten COVID-19 vaccines. In Nova Scotia, considering that more than half the population identifies as female, it’s possible that most of the 1.3 million vaccinations injected so far have gone to people with uteruses. And yet the effects of COVID vaccines on menstrual health […]
Healthcare
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Battle of the health care promises: Liberal, NDP, PC
Nova Scotia’s pandemic-time election has a clear focus—health care. PC leader Tim Houston launched his campaign with a massive health spending promise. NDP leader Gary Burrill pledged to eliminate ambulance fees and add nursing home beds for all who need them. And today, day 11 of the general election, Iain Rankin laid out the Liberal […]
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Nursing Homes of NS is launching its own election campaign
Update: Comment from Liberal leader Iain Rankin added following the July 17 morning election call. W hen election signs hit Nova Scotian lawns, so will campaign signs from the Nursing Homes of Nova Scotia Association. The organization is calling for a ministerial portfolio of continuing care and highlighting “issues that have been facing long-term care […]
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Nearly 70,000 Nova Scotians need a doctor
More Nova Scotians than ever are on the province’s waitlist registry for family doctors. The waiting list of Nova Scotians needing primary care hit 69,070 people July 1, 2021—up from about 45,000 a year ago. Premier Iain Rankin acknowledged there’s a problem with primary care, but added it’s not a problem unique to Nova Scotia. […]
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NS adds 264 beds for long-term care, needs 1,300
Nova Scotia will build 264 new long-term care beds and replace nearly 1,300 existing beds across the province, premier Iain Rankin announced Friday. Nova Scotia NDP and PC leaders say this plan falls short of what’s needed to support the public long-term care program—which has nearly 1,300 people waiting for a bed. In a […]
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What happened at Northwood?
A year ago this Saturday, April 17, three residents of Northwood, the long-term care centre in the heart of Halifax, died of COVID-19. Fifty more would die in the course of the next six, frantic weeks. While COVID raged inside the facility, the north end complex was sealed off from the surrounding community. The virus […]
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Living positive
There’s this pamphlet. It’s called HIV and Mental Health. And there are two happy white people on the inside back cover riding a red tandem bicycle. They’re coasting along a sunny downtown street. And they are smiling; they are glowing, like they’re in an ad for milk or toothpaste. The woman, on the back of […]
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Living with HIV
Aaron Burke is fluent in the language of HIV. He’s done the research. He knows the terminology. He’s a 43-year-old senior manager at a prominent Halifax company and by god he’s managing this disease, too. He’s also managing not to really tell anyone he has it. “Once the fire is going, I think it can […]
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Hitting home
Debra Mann’s house is tidy. Not only tidy, either, but clean. She says she thought, “Oh my god,” just before I arrived at her Halifax condo, “there’s dust on the coffee table. I forgot to dust the coffee table.” But if there is dust there, it’s invisible to the naked eye, just like the human […]
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The trials of Dr. Horne
Her first “light-bulb moment” occurred sometime on a Friday morning in the spring of 1999, probably in the stairwell between her tiny, windowless office on the second floor of the new Halifax Infirmary and the hospital’s Heart Function Clinic two flights up. Dr. Gabrielle Horne was on call at the clinic that morning—the nurses would […]
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The drug of choice
It’s the drug pro-choicers call an essential public health measure. It’s the drug pro-lifers call a chemical coat hanger. It’s RU-486. If you lived in France or almost any other European Union country, your doctor could prescribe it for you today. Ditto for China, India, New Zealand, Norway, Russia and South Africa, not to mention […]