When Adil Butt’s body started to ache, he immediately isolated himself in a small bedroom for a month to keep his young family safe from COVID-19.
The 42-year-old lives in Thorncliffe Park, a tightly knit community of apartment buildings in Toronto’s east end. Neighbours have been hit hard by the coronavirus.
Butt phoned to inquire about testing at a local pop-up site on Saturday, Dec. 5, got tested and received his positive result the following Monday.
He went above and beyond public health guidelines to avoid passing on the virus to his wife and children, ages 10, seven, six and three.”Nobody got it,” he said. “It was very hard, especially [for] my small kid.”
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the first quarantine measures to control COVID-19. When CBC News canvassed some doctors and scientists across Canada on what’s fundamentally changed in health care during the pandemic, what stood out was the need for more collaborative care similar to what Butt received.
Adil Butt said staying away from his young children was especially difficult after he received a positive test result. (Submitted by Adil Butt)
Primary care providers help prevent people from coming to hospital with damaging and costly complications of diabetes or infections.
Deaths and policy failures
Dr. Andrew Boozary, executive director of social medicine at Toronto’s University Health Network, said community health centres such as where Butt was tested offer a one-stop shop of services, including prescription medications, healthy foods and connections to housing and jobs for people living on the margins across Canada.
“There’s actually systemic discrimination in the way we pay for primary care and the way we fund our health-care system,” he said.
Boozary said the pandemic has exposed public policy failures, not only in long-term care homes but also in neighbourhoods where essential workers, many who are racialized, bear a disproportionate burden.
The Black Creek Community Health Centre, in Toronto’s Jane and Finch neighbourhood, serves an area with high case rates of COVID-19 but few resources. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
“Our failure or lack of policy has really determined who lives and who dies,” Boozary said. “When you go back to look at things like primary care, if you put the map of where primary care funding was and the map of where COVID was, there’s a complete mismatch.”
Boozary draws hope from community health centres, which he said have been a leader for decades in gaining patients’ trust by working with them regularly where they are.
Caring for all to stop coronavirus
Cheryl Prescod, executive director of Black Creek Community Health Centre in the city’s northwest, said their service is priceless and underestimated.
“Throughout this past year, I believe we saw our value,” she said.
Asked about the need for stable funding beyond the pandemic, Prescod said, “We feel invisible compared to larger hospitals or larger health-care institutions. The small community health centres are the distant cousins.”
Cheryl Prescod said small community health centres are seen as distant cousins of hospitals. Their value to the health-care system, however, is priceless, she said. (CBC)
But the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 will not discriminate between someone who earns a high income and someone who doesn’t.
WATCH | Community volunteers ease vaccine roll out:
Several community and religious groups in British Columbia are armed with computers and phones, ready to help local seniors sign up for COVID-19 vaccinations. 2:03
“The virus will not be stopped unless we take care of everybody,” Prescod said.
Paulina Aghedo works as one of the centre’s community ambassadors, sharing safety tips to stop the spread in her neighbourhood.
Paulina Aghedo hands out flyers promoting COVID-19 testing for the Black Creek Community Health Centre in Toronto. Her efforts helped a woman get tested so she could return to work. (CBC)
Now, Aghedo hands out flyers and sparks conversation, all to raise awareness of testing sites in apartment complexes, lobbies and parking lots. It’s home to many personal support workers and grocery clerks who work long hours and may still struggle to make ends meet.
She recalled knocking on doors in her crowded building to distribute flyers when a friend called to say someone needed to know about testing right away.
“She is just coughing in her working place and they told her if she doesn’t bring that COVID-19 test [result] she shouldn’t come back to work,” Aghedo said.
The flyer reached the woman, who tested negative and no longer feared losing her job.
“I was very happy I could help someone,” Aghedo said.
For his part, Butt gave up his job as an Uber driver during COVID-19. He temporarily lost his sense of smell, even for perfume that was pungent to his wife, as well as sense of taste.
During self-isolation, the food delivery volunteer relied on friends from his neighbourhood to return the gesture. For Butt, seeing neighbours helping each other to cope and recover resembles how doctors and nurses care for patients in hospitals.
“He [a friend] was bringing the food for me and leaving it outside my door and this is how we survived,” Butt said of his neighbour.
Butt’s fever broke after a few days and he’s fully recovered.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
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