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Haiti's wounded long to heal

Jeanne finally allows Slande, a volunteer from Florida, to clean and redress her amputation stump at the very busy Hopital d'Etat de la Universite Haiti. Photo: Scott Weinstein

For Elisa Zlami, the burden of her fractured leg just got heavier, literally. The day before, Marc, an ortho-tech at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, came immediately to her tent, "Post Op 3," after I asked him to "do something" about Elisa's old split cast that was causing her pain. Haiti's earthquake snapped her shin bone in two, and left an open wound that has finally healed.

Marc expertly rewrapped her leg in a new plaster cast. Despite a day of drying, the new cast must weigh 20 lbs. Yet her leg still hurts along the fracture point. A summoned orthopedic doctor inspects Elisa, and tells her the pain should go away, and Elisa need not stay in the hospital. But Elisa has lost her home, and her family too.

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NGO medicine Haiti earthquake

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A Haitian school struggles in the aftermath of the earthquake

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'Here I sit under my palm tree': A Canadian photographer reports from Haiti

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Observations on the ground after the Haitian earthquake.

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A letter to Haiti

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A Canadian writer laments destruction in an extraordinary country.
in her own words

Bad medicine from advisory panel at CMA annual meeting

Imagine you're feeling sick. You have an inexplicable pain in your stomach. So you go to your doctor, and she sends you for a test. The test for your stomach pain is inconclusive.

"I think I know what the problem is. And I probably have something I could give you for it," says your doctor. "How about you pay me an extra $50, and then we can discuss it further?"

Most of us would think that's unacceptable. We already pay taxes to finance our universal health care. We would want our doctors to run more tests, give us a diagnosis and write us a prescription.

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public healthcare option public health care private health care medicine health care Canadian Doctors for Medicare Canada Health Act
Columnists

Halting rising drug costs in Canada

Workers at the Moosehead Brewery in Saint John have been locked out for three weeks in a different kind of labour dispute: over high drug costs. The company says it can no longer afford to pay 100 per cent of these costs to its retirees, and wants employees to kick in 30 per cent -- a reminder of the pressures of drug costs on private as well as public plans.

Meanwhile, one of Quebec's foremost public health specialists, Dr. Fernand Turcotte, co-founder of the Laval medical school, recently announced a shattering realization: "that the things I had been teaching my students for 35 years were not true."

Tags:
prescription drugs pharmaceutical companies medicine health care system drug costs big pharma

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Big Pharma and the real story behind drug costs

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A national Pharmacare program, as a half-dozen countries already have, would save Canada over $10 billion a year on its $25-billion drug bill.

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Big Pharma Fails the Poor and Sick

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It seems like a long time since there's been an example as good as Nortel to trot out in response to the boneheaded assertion that the private sector always does things better.

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babble: Universal Pharmacare - An issue made to order for the NDP

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A universal pharmacare program could chop more than $10 billion off Canada's annual health-care bill, according to a new policy study that its authors say "explodes the fallacy" that such a plan is unaffordable.
Lindsay Beyerstein

Weekly Pulse: #DearJohn, does banning abortion trump job growth?

By Lindsay Beyerstein
| February 3, 2011

With millions of Americans out of work, House Republicans are focusing in on real priorities: decimating private abortion coverage and crippling public funding for abortion, as Jessica Arons reports in RH Reality Check.

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Needs No Introduction
Needs No Introduction

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2010: The oral histories of medical education

June 1, 2010
| Jonathan Reinarz speaks about his conversations with medical consultants who worked in provincial England during the 1930s and 1940s.

27:06 minutes (24.84 MB)
Needs No Introduction
Needs No Introduction

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2010: Irma Levasseur, 'Femme Médecin Tombée dans l'Oubli'

May 31, 2010
| Needs No Introduction's first lecture en français, presented by Hugues Théorêt, discusses the recognition owed to Canada's first female French-Canadian doctor.

22:46 minutes (20.88 MB)
Needs No Introduction
Needs No Introduction

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2010: 'Voices from the second wave and the feminization of Canadian medicine'

May 30, 2010
| At the 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Jackie Duffin and Meryn Stuart discuss the challenges faced and achievements made by Canada's female medical professionals.

16:15 minutes (14.91 MB)
Needs No Introduction
Needs No Introduction

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2010: The No.15 Canadian General Hospital in Northern Africa

May 30, 2010
| Tabitha Marshall speaks about the accomplishments of the hospital, referencing the diary and letters of Colonel J.R.D. Farmer, its Commanding Officer.

26:29 minutes (24.27 MB)
Eric Mang

Homeopathy preys on the desperate

By Eric Mang
| March 26, 2010

When humans are afflicted with sickness and misery, when they are searching for a cure, sometimes reason is shoved aside in desperation.

There was a recent story in the mainstream media about a naturopath who went to Jacmel, Haiti to dispense homeopathic "remedies". Ailing Haitians who had lined up thinking they would have access to medicine, left after learning that what was being offered had no medical value.

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rabble series

MakerCulture: What's the new world order?

If we can make everything we need ourselves then what? What are the legal, corporate, cultural and psychological roadblocks MakerCulture needs to break through to the mainstream?

So what is maker motivation?

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Tags:
medicine makerculture health future business

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MakerCulture: Edupunks of the world unite!

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We shouldn't rely on paperwork to back up someone's qualifications. Here is how some people are developing a new, radical approach to education.

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MakerCulture: Playing with our food

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Our comestibles get artists' creative juices flowing, both in and out of the kitchen.

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MakerCulture on rabble.ca

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The entire series
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