Welcome to Alberta, the Richest Place on Earth, where body lice are showing up on residents of homeless shelters, an affliction normally associated with Third World refugee camps.
Earlier this week, University of Alberta infectious diseases specialist Dr. Stan Houston warned colleagues in an email of "a very powerful health indicator of the kind of poverty we are seeing (and creating) in this, one of the wealthiest political jurisdictions in the world."
To wit, said Houston: "Last week, for the first time in my life, including seven years in Africa, I saw a patient of mine with a body louse infestation. He had been living in city shelters, so there has to be more where that came from."
Houston added that he had immediately notified public health authorities.
