Medicine and Health
Canada: Chaotic response to swine flu pandemic highlights government indifference
By Carl Bronski, November 9, 2009
Federal and provincial health officials are backtracking on earlier commitments to help both high-risk groups and members of the general population seeking vaccination.
Media sensationalism, corporate power and the swine flu outbreak
By Alex Lantier, May 4, 2009
The handling of the swine flu outbreak underscores the difficulty, in the present political environment, of separating medical science from corporate interests and the political agendas of governments...
Rates of hospital-acquired infection rising in Canada
By John MacKay, December 29, 2008
A study, based on a survey of Canadian hospitals, has found that hospital-acquired infection rates continue to rise and that for want of funding, infection-control programs continue to fall well short...
A letter on Canada, South Africa and deadly asbestos
November 1, 2008
The following letter was sent to the World Socialist Web Site in response to the article, “Canadian Government defends export of asbestos to poorer nations.”
Canada: Listeriosis epidemic continues—Liberal and Tory policies culpable
By John Mackay, October 14, 2008
The number of deaths linked to the listeriosis outbreak that originated at the Maple Leaf Foods meatpacking plant in Toronto has now risen to 20.
WHO report discloses extent of global health inequality
By Barry Mason, September 25, 2008
In August the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a report, “Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health.”
China’s milk crisis: another disaster unleashed by the capitalist market
Unregulated dairy industry
By John Chan, September 24, 2008
The contamination of Chinese milk products with the toxic industrial chemical melamine is rapidly becoming a major national and international scandal. Already, some 53,000 infants have become sick and...
Canadian Medical Association Journal attacks Harper government for listeria epidemic
By John Mackay, September 20, 2008
The Canadian Medical Association Journal, one of the world’s top medical publications, has made a scathing attack on Canada’s Conservative government, charging that “government polic...
AIDS conference reflects failure to tackle deepening catastrophe
By Barry Mason, August 12, 2008
The latest figures for the AIDS epidemic were published by UNAIDS and WHO (World Health Organisation) last month. Two million people died of AIDS in 2007—of whom one-quarter of a million were ch...
Report details spread of global AIDS epidemic
By Barry Mason, January 13, 2007
Last year saw a major spread of the global AIDS epidemic. According to the report “2006 Aids Epidemic Update” published by the United Nations bodies UNAIDS and the World Health Organisatio...
Chikungunya epidemic on the French Island of Réunion: a “natural” catastrophe
By Françoise Thull and Pierre Mabut, March 15, 2006
The epidemic that has raged on the Réunion Island since March 2005 has, according to official figures, affected 157,000 people, 20 percent of the population, with 77 deaths directly or indirectly att...
Bird flu threat grows in Europe and Africa
By Andreas Reiss, March 13, 2006
Cases of Asiatic bird flu are spreading in Germany and other European states, but no governmental authorities—at either the national, state or local levels—seem to have developed serious p...
