For the last two years, rushing their toddler to hospital has become the norm for Daniela Mora-Fisher and her husband.
“A cold would become a wheeze. A wheeze would become a crisis,” Mora-Fisher said.
Julian, now three years old, has been “struggling with respiratory distress since probably he was 18 months,” she said.
Mora-Fisher, a foreign-trained physician who now works as a researcher at a Toronto doctor’s office, suspects a combination of allergies and viruses might be triggering what could be asthma. Specialists at her local hospital have seen Julian in their asthma clinic, she said, but they’ve told her they need to wait until he’s old enough to do the breathing tests required to confirm it.
Mora-Fisher and her husband have tried everything they can to reduce potential allergens —including moving out of an old house to try to get away from mould and from busy bus traffic she thought might have been polluting the air.
Allergies in both children and adults have definitely been on the rise over the last several years, said Dr. Susan Waserman, division director of clinical immunology and allergy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.
“We’ve been seeing this now for decades,” Waserman said. “It’s eczema. It’s allergic rhinitis. It’s asthma. It’s food allergy. It’s really everything.”
Much of the rise in allergies and asthma “can be directly linked to climate change,” said Dr. Melissa Lem, a family physician in Vancouver and president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).
Research has shown that over the last few decades in North America, “the average pollen season has extended about three weeks and that now plants release about 20 per cent more pollen than they used to,” Lem said.
That’s consistent with data gathered by Aerobiology, a Canadian company that monitors airborne allergens such as pollen and mould spores.
“We are seeing a lot more pollen and higher concentrations of pollen overall in the air year over year,” said Aerobiology spokesperson Daniel Coates.
“Pollen reacts to warmer weather. The more warmer weather you have, the more pollen you’re generally going to have in the air. And so there seems to be a correlation between the amount of pollen that we see in the air and the warmer weather that we’re having due to climate change.”
Waserman said she’s seeing more allergies in younger children than ever before.
“We used to think that pollen allergy wouldn’t make an appearance ’till the age of five or so. I see a lot of environmental allergy a couple of years earlier than that now,” she said.
“It’s a higher number of people and (they’re) starting earlier.”
Pollen isn’t the only allergy worsened by climate change, Lem said.
”Flooding … can lead to more mould in people’s homes and more moisture and people who have allergies to moulds can experience more indoor allergies,” she said.
“We also know that the very thing that’s driving climate change also increases allergies,” Lem said.
Burning fossil fuels releases more inhalable particles into the air. In addition to directly irritating people’s respiratory systems, the pollutants may trigger the release of immunoglobulin E, which is associated with allergic responses in the body, she said.
Climate change is directly linked to an increasing number of wildfires in Canada, which also contributes to the problem, Lem said.
“In clinical practice myself as a family doctor, I’ve seen many more patients in the last few years just anecdotally saying ‘I’d never had allergies before and now I do’. And also I tend to see more flares in those respiratory symptoms during smoke season,” she said.
“All those different moving parts … are coming together to create this storm of allergies,” Lem said.
Cecilia Sierra-Heredia, a research associate studying environmental health and children’s allergies and asthma at Simon Fraser University, agreed.
“The hypothesis is that this is a double exposure that kids are growing up with,” she said.
“More pollen in the air, more particulate matter, more pollution that’s inflaming the airways and then kind of priming their respiratory tissues and their immune systems to develop allergies and asthma.”
Sierra-Heredia noted thata “genetic predisposition” may be another factor.
Daniela Mora-Fisher said she’s surprised to see how many other toddlers besides Julian are suffering from breathing issues.
”Almost every single parent I know has puffers with their kids,” she said.
She also thinks the air quality around her home has triggered allergic reactions among family members when they’ve visited from Ecuador.
“They have no allergies or anything” when they’re back home, Mora-Fisher said.
But every time they visit her in Toronto, “they cannot stop, like, having rashes and sneezing,” she said.
In addition to taking steps to reduce climate change overall, there are more immediate measures that people suffering from allergies and their health-care providers can take to provide some relief.
Air purifiers in the home can help allergy sufferers, said Sierra-Heredia. If pollen is the problem, people should consider changing their clothes when they come inside and even shower if they’ve spent a lot of time outside in a park.
Allergy medications have improved over the years, Waserman said — including allergy tablets that “are now able to desensitize you to trees, to grass, to ragweed.”
Many people dismiss allergies and “suffer in silence” when they don’t have to, she said.
“When you can’t sleep, when you can’t concentrate, when your kid’s exam performance is impacted … all of these things are important quality-of-life measures. So don’t ignore them.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 26, 2023.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
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.
