The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Toronto - It will be voters across Canada who ultimately decide whether provinces and territories are successful in their efforts to reduce hospital wait times, federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Friday. Under their new 10-year health accord with Ottawa, the provinces will track wait times for a host of procedures, including surgeries, joint replacements, MRIs, cataract operations and radiation treatments. By the end of March 2007, the federal and provincial governments hope to be able to announce significantly reduced "medically acceptable" wait times for such procedures. Toronto - The alarming prevalence of HIV and hepatitis C infection among inmates is a health issue that affects all Canadians and requires the country's prisons to immediately adopt needle exchange programs, say advocacy groups. "These are transmissible diseases which are being spread within the prison and have the potential to spread when people come out of the prison," said Dr. Peter Ford of the Ontario Medical Association. Edmonton - With repercussions from mad-cow disease dogging Western Canada's cattle industry, 16 scientists at the University of Alberta are joining forces to try to understand it and related diseases. The scientists are pooling their expertise in research funding to form the University of Alberta Center for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada.
