Friday, 10 January 2025

Healthcare

Outlaw paid-for plasma in Nova Scotia now, unions and public health advocates urge

A private for-profit blood supply system is not welcome in Nova Scotia, and the provincial government should enact legislation as soon as possible to ensure private companies do not get to set up shop here. That was the main message at this morning’s press conference organized by unions, the Nova Scotia Health Coalition and Bloodwatch, an organization that advocates for a safe, voluntary, public blood system in Canada.

Media release: ACE team says new budget not addressing long-term care needs

News release: The ACE (Advocates for the Care of the Elderly) Team is very disappointed that the new Provincial Budget does little to address long, overdue needs in long-term care.

According to ACE Team Chair, Gary MacLeod, “While this Budget is supposed to be about “Stronger Services and Supports”, this is clearly not being done for long-term care.  Expanding the Caregiver Benefit program or increasing the Seniors Safety grant program does little to improve or provide more long-term care”

Live art: Anarcha’s Legacy

This Friday at 7 PM the Maritime Museum will be hosting a live art show in honour of an enslaved black woman named Anarcha whose body was experimented upon in the 1800’s in order to find a treatment for obstetric fistula. We speak with Habiba Cooper Diallo, the driving force behind the event that features poet and historian Afua Cooper, Dartmouth painter Kim Cain, and spoken word artist Kilah Rolle.

Lives on welfare: I was the rock that everyone else was leaning on

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Meet Sophia (not her real name), who lives with a painful illness, raises a son who lives with developmental disabilities, and does all that on a $156 monthly personal allowance, after rent and power bills are paid, and an arrears to Community Services is dealt with. Please let that sink in. $156 per month.  At the bottom of the story we tell you what you can do to help change this.

The need for rural women’s marches

Applied to current events, no march on Saturday will be better than any other. However, ensuring that there are marches in rural as well as urban areas is crucial in signifying both difference in lived experience and togetherness in the struggle for female empowerment, writes Lori Oliver. She then takes a closer look at two key problems for women in rural Nova Scotia are difficulties accessing abortion services and a higher rate of domestic, intimate partner violence—both of which disastrously intersect with how women continue to earn, on average, 87 cents to men’s $1. Barriers faced by racialized groups are even more severe.

Waiting for a robocall –Life without a family doctor in Nova Scotia

Former Chronicle Herald reporter Mary Ellen MacIntyre writes about an assortment of tactics she has used to entice a new family doctor, including trying to look younger, healthier and more interesting. Late last year there was the robocall to confirm that a doctor was still needed, and even that call became a source of stress. “And so, we wait. Close to one hundred thousand-strong, we wait.”