Long-term care best when public

Long-term care remains in crisis in Manitoba. As a result, too many Manitobans fear what will happen to them and their relatives as they age and develop more complex health needs.

Former abuser of alcohol, drugs who graduated from recovery program now helping others

The second time Ray Ducharme overdosed, he was in a Winnipeg hotel room, waiting for a spot in Adult and Teen Challenge Central Canada’s live-in recovery program.

It was Oct. 30, 2024 — not long after his first overdose had landed him in a Red Deer, Alta., hospital for eight days. Ducharme had gone west, trying to outrun the baggage he carried in Winnipeg, before eventually returning home at the behest of an ATCCC employee who assured him there would be a bed available in seven to 10 days.

Then came the second OD.

Three days later, in early November, Ducharme woke up in a Winnipeg hospital with his family around him. Doctors weren’t sure he’d survive.

Rare and tough to notice, sarcomas may lurk in the body

Last summer, Michelle Finley was going about a normal day.

She had just dropped her car off at a garage and was walking back to her office building downtown when, suddenly, she was stopped in her tracks by a searing cramp on the bottom of her right foot.

“It was so painful it took my breath away,” says Finley, now 52. “I stopped and held on to the side of a building for a second — like, it was bringing tears to my eyes.”

Finley thought she had a really bad case of plantar fasciitis. Nine months later she would lose her foot to sarcoma.

NDP trying to solve health-care problems from every angle — except the one likely to have the biggest impact

Winnipeg’s emergency-room wait times hit a record high in July, according to the latest data released Thursday by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

The 90th-percentile wait for all emergency rooms and urgent-care sites hit a staggering 13.02 hours last month, the longest wait ever recorded since the WRHA began publishing monthly data.

Thirteen hours is not a wait, it’s an endurance test. And it’s getting worse.

The 90th percentile is the point at which nine out of 10 patients experienced a shorter wait and one in 10 waited even longer.

At the city’s busiest fire and paramedic hall, first responders face a relentless workload

As a soft rain begins to fall between the concrete walls of “Hope Alley,” little feels further away than the place’s namesake.

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews have been called to the narrow downtown passage, named by Al Wiebe, a formerly homeless man turned advocate. People regularly pass through here, moving between the shelters, drop-ins and resource centres clustered around Main Street between Logan and Higgins avenues.

Against a wall, as the sky switches into night mode, a man sits bleeding from his nose, seemingly unaware of how he ended up with blood running down his T-shirt.

His situation has already set Winnipeg’s emergency response network in motion.

Northern Manitoba mobile MRI makes first move in 15 months

Northern Manitoba’s mobile MRI made its first move since it began scanning in Thompson nearly 15 months ago, setting up shop Monday in The Pas.

Mole Mobile on move for your dermatological needs

This weekend, the Mole Mobile will set up shop at three Winnipeg Walmart locations. The mobile clinic will have certified dermatologists on site to screen suspicious-looking moles or lesions for skin cancer.

Inside the Montreal lab working to prepare Canada against future pandemics

MONTREAL - In a biomedicine laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal, animal protein grows in a bubbling orange solution as researchers in white lab coats take samples with large syringes.

Neatly-labelled glass bottles filled with clear liquid line the shelves next to computer monitors, where the scientists examine the antibodies produced by the cells.

In a room down the hall, a large cryogenic freezer is filled with tubes containing samples of proteins and cells that can be used to develop vaccines and medicines.

Six years after the spread of COVID-19 caught the world by surprise, the Polytechnique lab is spearheading efforts to prepare Canada against future pandemics.

Manitoba supports MAID delay: Asagwara

The number of Manitobans receiving medical assistance in dying in 2026 is on track with previous years while the plan to extend it to those suffering from mental illness may be delayed indefinitely by the federal government — a move Manitoba’s health minister supports.

“There’s so much more work that needs to be done,” Uzoma Asagwara said.

The parliamentary committee that issued its recommendation in June was the third special committee of Parliament struck to assess the eligibility of people with mental illness since 2021, when MAID eligibility was expanded to include people who were not at the end of their lives.

A key condition for MAID eligibility is that a patient must be suffering from a grievous and irremediable medical condition.

HSC nurses concerned info hacked in cyberattack

Health Sciences Centre workers are concerned their personal information has been compromised after a ransomware attack at Manitoba’s largest hospital.

Shared Health said Monday a cyberattack had affected certain facility maintenance systems, such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning, as well as door access at HSC.

While Shared Health said patient information hasn’t been compromised, it has not assured workers that their information is secure, the president of the Manitoba Nurses Union said Wednesday. She noted employee badges allow HSC staffers to access different parts of the hospital.

“Those (identity) badges hold a lot of information — personal information,” Darlene Jackson said. “This is all their personal information, their date of birth — their everything is on there.”

Federal government invests $24 million for cannabis and brain health research

TORONTO - Federal Minister of Health Marjorie Michel has announced $24 million to create the Canadian Cannabis and Brain Health Consortium.

Funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the group of 10 research teams from across Canada will work together to study how cannabis affects the brain in people of various ages.

The consortium, announced Wednesday, aims to establish scientific evidence about both potential benefits and harms of cannabis, including its effects on epilepsy, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep, mental health and brain development in youth and during pregnancy.

Dr. Patricia Conrod, scientific director at CIHR's Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, says the researchers will also recruit more than 3,000 people of all ages and collect data about brain function, mental health and substance use across the lifespan.

Quiet opening fitting for controversial site

One of this city’s most loudly debated facilities — after all the angst, all the opposition and all the vocal support — began operations in the most low-key way possible.

A mission to make hearing care easier to access

Armando Di Lello was four years old when he was diagnosed with hearing loss in both ears and received his first hearing aids. He doesn’t remember that moment, but he recalls moments that followed.

“Going through elementary, middle school, high school — it was definitely something that was not a positive experience for me,” he said.

Di Lello’s hearing aids were big, bulky and noisy, and he chose not to wear them much of the time.

“I didn’t perceive the benefit as a kid,” he said. “No kid wants to appear different.”

Long-awaited supervised drug consumption site opens quietly after months of loud opposition

After three years of planning, delays and constant controversy, Manitoba’s first supervised drug consumption site quietly opened its doors Tuesday morning.

Manitoba opens province’s first supervised consumption site

WINNIPEG - Manitoba's addictions minister says it's a special but bittersweet day as the province opens its first supervised consumption site.

Bernadette Smith said Tuesday that the site in central Winnipeg is long overdue and will help get people the care they need.

"We can't treat people who aren't alive," said Smith.

"So this is a place for folks to go to get supervised with their substances, but also more importantly, to get connected with supports and services so they can get on to a path of recovery."

City emergency crews to administer drug that stops opioid withdrawal symptoms

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews will soon give out a medication that stops withdrawal symptoms after someone is treated for an opioid overdose.

Emergency workers will be administering a drug called buprenorphine, after Health Canada granted WFPS permission to use the controlled substance.

“Buprenorphine is a medication that offers people who are in active addiction — so those people who have received naloxone as a result of an overdose and those that are experiencing significant and, at times, dangerous withdrawal symptoms — just a bit of a reprieve … (It) reduces cravings and prevents those immediate withdrawal symptoms, which allows more time to connect those patients to further care,” said Michelle Long, WFPS assistant chief of paramedic operations.

The treatment option is in response to a persistently high number of WFPS opioid calls.

Province allows pharmacists to prescribe birth control; more services coming, Asagwara says

Manitoba pharmacists have new powers to assess for, prescribe and administer birth control.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced an expanded scope of practice — although limitations on the profession remain the strictest in Canada — during a news conference Friday.

“This means that people will be able to access contraception more quickly, more conveniently and closer to home,” Asagwara told reporters inside the legislature.

The minister touted the regulatory changes, which came into effect Tuesday, as an expansion of the province’s free birth control initiative.

Local medical scrubs retailer feeling abandoned by U of M, RRC Polytech nursing programs

A Winnipeg uniform store is appealing to medical students to shop locally for scrubs this back-to-school season as it grapples with growing competition online and an apparent shutout by local campuses.

Unimor Healthwear has long ordered uniforms in bulk in navy blue, burgundy and pewter, as nurses-in-training are required to wear those colours based on where they’re enrolled in the province.

“It’s not like it used to be,” Evan Schwartz said about customer traffic to his store at 98 Sherbrook St.

The company’s director estimated he spent about $15,000 to stock up on scrubs in pewter in preparation for the launch of Red River College Polytechnic’s upcoming nursing intake.

Delirium is often missed by health providers. Could an AI risk predictor help?

TORONTO - Bruce MacLeod never thought he would forget his own birthday.

But a couple days after a heart valve replacement in February 2025, he did.

"It was strange. It was just out of reach, like, if I reached a little further, I could have pulled those memories back, but I was unsuccessful at the time," MacLeod, 65, said.

His partner, Harry Ennis, recalls coming into the hospital room one day to find MacLeod had ripped off his heart monitor, and his belongings were packed up to leave.