Two women in southwestern Nova Scotia are questioning the response by Public Health after they say invasive group A strep infections left them in hospital fighting flesh-eating disease.
The episode raises questions about public health messaging in the age of social media, according to one expert.
Kelly Doucet, who lives in Hebron, N.S., said she thought she had the flu when her ordeal began last month. But she said her mother encouraged her to go to Yarmouth Regional Hospital after hearing about a couple in the area who died as a result of invasive group A strep.
“I knew that it was in the province,” she said. “I wasn’t really aware of the symptoms, signs or severity of what it was.”
Doucet said she needed surgery to treat flesh-eating disease as a result of the Strep A infection. And while the Yarmouth hospital team was excellent, she said, Public Health’s response has been a disappointment.
“I got more information off of the internet than when [Public Health was] calling me in my hospital bed,” she said.
Her grandson, who had stayed with Doucet in the days prior to her illness, was treated with a preventive antibiotic by Public Health, she said. But her daughter, who is the boy’s mother and did not stay with Doucet, received no antibiotics and wound up in hospital with what she believes was a complication from a strep infection.
“When I was laying in my bed [after] being cut open, my daughter was going to the outpatients,” Doucet said. “That was the worst 24 hours of my life.”
Second case of flesh-eating disease
Crystal Dillon, who lives in Brooklyn, N.S., said her household wasn’t contacted after she was hospitalized and diagnosed with flesh-eating disease as a result of an invasive group A strep infection.
She said there was a long wait when she visited the Yarmouth Regional Hospital on April 8 because the emergency departments in Shelburne and Digby were closed at that time.
“After seven hours, I left. I couldn’t sit anymore,” said Dillon, who returned to the hospital two days later, at which point she received surgery.
There should have also been more information communicated about invasive strep infections in the community, she said.
“People should have at least been given information so that it wasn’t scary for them to hear that I had this.”
Viral social media post
An anonymous Facebook message, purportedly written by a nurse, was posted more than a week after Doucet and Dillon arrived in hospital. It claimed there were five active cases of flesh-eating disease at the hospital. And it was shared by thousands of users.
Nova Scotia Health subsequently said online claims about flesh-eating disease in the Yarmouth area were inaccurate, and a spokesperson for the department said the claims had caused “unnecessary public concern.”
But Doucet and Dillon said the post provided valuable information about the level of infection in the community.
Frustration with the health-care system is likely part of the reason why the post spread widely, according to Robert Huish, an associate professor of international development studies at Dalhousie University.
“That rumour mill becomes a vent for frustration on the way a public policy is acting right now,” he said.
Public health messages about COVID-19 were well received by most in Nova Scotia during the pandemic, he said, but health officials can always do better by ensuring messages are inclusive and understandable.
“The architecture of Public Health now is to try to figure out ways to get ahead of the rumours and the scuttlebutt through social media,” said Huish.
Infections were communicated appropriately
Dr. Robert Strang, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said Nova Scotians should look at the source of information shared on social media.
He said there is a lack of trust in science and public health, particularly since the pandemic.
“We have to work with the general public to help them understand that there’s a lot of misinformation,” he said, “and some of it is deliberate disinformation on social media.”
Strang said the “slightly increased” rates of invasive group A strep have been communicated appropriately.
As of May 2, Nova Scotia Health had reported 61 cases of invasive group A strep, and about half of those were classified as severe infections. There have been 12 deaths across the province.
Invasive group A strep
Invasive group A strep infections happen when usually harmless strep bacteria invades parts of the body that it’s not normally found in. This can lead to complications like flesh-eating disease, meningitis and even death.
“There’s nothing to suggest that there’s any increased concern around invasive group A strep in the Yarmouth area than there is anywhere in the rest of Nova Scotia,” Strang said.
He also said that while he could not comment on individual cases, there are clear protocols that dictate when Public Health can provide antibiotics to prevent infection.
Nova Scotia Health Minister Michelle Thompson said the department is constantly trying to provide accurate information in a timely fashion.
“Sometimes that information is well out in front of any of the communications teams or the media for example,” said Thompson. “Not everything we read on social media is true, but it is immediate.”
Huish said that dispelling misinformation or disinformation and rebuilding trust is vital before another public-health emergency hits.
“So if there is a need to try to co-ordinate trust and buy-in for another emergency down the road, it’s little moments like that that will be a real hindrance going forward,” he said.
Some Ontario doctors have started offering a free shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus while Quebec will begin its immunization program next month.
The new shot called Nirsevimab gives babies antibodies that provide passive immunity to RSV, a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections for infants and seniors, which can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
Ontario’s ministry of health says the shot is already available at some doctor’s offices in Ontario with the province’s remaining supply set to arrive by the end of the month.
Quebec will begin administering the shots on Nov. 4 to babies born in hospitals and delivery centers.
Parents in Quebec with babies under six months or those who are older but more vulnerable to infection can also book immunization appointments online.
The injection will be available in Nunavut and Yukon this fall and winter, though administration start dates have not yet been announced.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
-With files from Nicole Ireland
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Polio cases are rising ahead of a new vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where violence targeting health workers and the police protecting them has hampered years of efforts toward making the country polio-free.
Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, said Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication.
The new nationwide drive starts Oct. 28 with the aim to vaccinate at least 32 million children. “The whole purpose of these campaigns is to achieve the target of making Pakistan a polio-free state,” he said.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Most of the new polio cases were reported in the southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and eastern Punjab province.
The locations are worrying authorities since previous cases were from the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban government in September suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. Authorities in Pakistan have said that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions beyond the Afghan border, as people from both sides frequently travel to each other’s country.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023. Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy this June for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, according to WHO.
Health officials in Pakistan say they want the both sides to conduct anti-polio drives simultaneously.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people with private health insurance would be able to pick up over-the-counter methods like condoms, the “morning after” pill and birth control pills for free under a new rule the White House proposed on Monday.
Right now, health insurers must cover the cost of prescribed contraception, including prescription birth control or even condoms that doctors have issued a prescription for. But the new rule would expand that coverage, allowing millions of people on private health insurance to pick up free condoms, birth control pills, or “morning after” pills from local storefronts without a prescription.
The proposal comes days before Election Day, as Vice President Kamala Harris affixes her presidential campaign to a promise of expanding women’s health care access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to undo nationwide abortion rights two years ago. Harris has sought to craft a distinct contrast from her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, who appointed some of the judges who issued that ruling.
“The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.”
The emergency contraceptives that people on private insurance would be able to access without costs include levonorgestrel, a pill that needs to be taken immediately after sex to prevent pregnancy and is more commonly known by the brand name “Plan B.”
Without a doctor’s prescription, women may pay as much as $50 for a pack of the pills. And women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness, since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours after sex.
If implemented, the new rule would also require insurers to fully bear the cost of the once-a-day Opill, a new over-the-counter birth control pill that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved last year. A one-month supply of the pills costs $20.
Federal mandates for private health insurance to cover contraceptive care were first introduced with the Affordable Care Act, which required plans to pick up the cost of FDA-approved birth control that had been prescribed by a doctor as a preventative service.
The proposed rule would not impact those on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poorest Americans. States are largely left to design their own rules around Medicaid coverage for contraception, and few cover over-the-counter methods like Plan B or condoms.