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ERs across Canada brace for summer staffing shortages
Emergency rooms across the country are being forced to confront longer wait times and an increase in closures, as health-care staff bear the brunt of overwhelming workloads and inadequate time off.
And the summer season may exacerbate the situation even further, with staff heading on vacation and many Canadians heading out to rural areas for cottaging and camping.
“Summer is a high-volume time. In the medical profession, we really just keep on working because the patients keep coming. Emergency rooms have to be staffed,” Dr. Raghu Venugopal, an emergency room physician in Toronto, told Global News.
“And the kind of accidents that happen in rural communities can be significant … serious highway injuries, agricultural industry injuries. These are very serious injuries that need timely care,” he said.
But the emergency room closures in rural areas, such as the one in Minden, Ont., on Thursday, pose a critical risk for many people, according to Venugopal, as the extended travel time to reach the nearest hospital can potentially mean the difference between life and death.
Read more about emergency room shortages amid summer holidays and what provinces have done to prep for it.
Why some people get more mosquito bites
When it comes to mosquitoes, there is always a group of unfortunate people who seem to attract the majority of the relentless bites while others remain relatively untouched.
They are known as mosquito magnets.
If you are an unlucky mosquito magnet, having to swat away pesky insects more than those around you, you are not alone. From genetics to body chemistry, experts say many elements come into play that determine who these bloodsuckers find irresistible.
A 2022 study published in Cell, found that people who are most preyed upon by mosquitoes produce a lot of certain chemicals on their skin tied to smell.
“We determined that highly attractive humans have higher levels of several carboxylic acids on their skin than less attractive humans,” the researchers stated in their study.
David Beresford, an entomology professor at Trent University in Oshawa, Ont., said there may be other factors at play too.
Read more here about what Beresford says about mosquito magnets and what people can do to avoid being a target for bloodsuckers.
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Canada 1st country to label individual cigarettes with health warning
— WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING —
In a global first, Canada on Wednesday unveiled an initiative that will soon see health warnings included on every single cigarette sold in the country.
The upcoming cigarette labels will have messages written in both English and French, covering a wide range of health warnings dealing with smoking’s harmful effects on children, organ damage and cancer risks.
The label will also be included on “little cigars,” tubes and other tobacco products, the federal government said in a release. The strategy is meant to help Canada reach its goal of less than five per cent tobacco use by 2035, which currently sits at 13 per cent, according to Health Canada.
The regulations for the label will come into force on Aug. 1, 2023, but will be implemented in phases. King-size cigarettes will be the first to feature the new label and will be sold by retailers by the end of July 2024, followed by regular-size cigarettes and little cigars and tubes by the end of April 2025.
The individual label idea was introduced in June 2022 and was followed by a public consultation process. At the time, the government said there is concern that warnings on cigarette packages that had been implemented since 2000 were losing their novelty and impact.
“This bold step will make health warning messages virtually unavoidable, and together with updated graphic images displayed on the package, will provide a real and startling reminder of the health consequences of smoking,” Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett said in a statement.
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