February 17, 2015 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Julie Linkunatis loves to work.
Canada’s instability trap: Life in the temp work lane
Deb Matthews
Health Minister considers requiring some drugs be ‘tamper-resistant’
June 16, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
Federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose is considering requiring certain prescription drugs be tamper-resistant – and she wants to know what you think.
Toronto’s Board of Health wants a supervised injection site. The province doesn’t. Now what?
Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
Toronto’s board of health became Ontario’s first governing body to endorse supervised injection sites this week, but the momentum may stop there: The province isn’t interested.
Ontario doctors still in the dark on drug database
Remember back when Ontario rolled out an online narcotics-prescription database – one meant to track exactly who is prescribing what to whom? The idea is to prevent “double-doctoring” and ensuring that doctors, pharmacists and Health Ministry officials ensure that people who need drugs are getting them.
The database was in testing phase as of November, 2011 and was supposed to be operational early this year. But the people prescribing the drugs still can’t access it. That means they have no idea what other drugs a potential patient could be taking, or was taking. In some cases, it means patients can’t get the drugs they need.
Toronto doctor Irfan Dhalla said doctors still have no idea when they’re going to get in on this database – but they’d really, really like to.
Provinces clamp down on OxyContin abuse
Photo by Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail
Saturday, February 18, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
The epicentres of Canada’s prescription pill problem have said they’ll only pay for the leading brand of potent painkillers under special circumstances – one of the most dramatic steps taken in years to tackle the country’s fastest-growing addiction.
Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures OxyContin, is replacing it with a drug that’s supposed to be less prone to abuse. But some provinces have decided that’s not good enough.
Treating the tiny victims of Canada’s fastest-growing addiction
Laura holds Carter at their home in Hamilton, ON. He was born with the shakes, the sweats, stiff limbs and sneezing fits, hospitalized and on morphine for three weeks. He's now home, and healthy.
Photo by Glenn Lowson for the Globe and Mail
Saturday, January 7, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
HAMILTON — Hours after his birth, stiff-limbed and trembling, Carter was whisked away to a bassinet in a neonatal intensive care unit and fed morphine through a dropper.
He broke out in sweats, a fine sheen clinging to his neck and scalp, when, weeks later, nurses started to wean him off. His mother, Laura, who asked to be identified by her first name only, knew exactly what he was going through: She’d experienced withdrawal before.
“That was the worst part. Knowing what it feels like, and knowing a little baby … it’s the worst feeling in the world, you know? You don’t want your child to go through that.”
Database will allow Ontario to clamp down on over-prescribing doctors
Toby Talbot/The Associated Press
Friday, August 12, 2011 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Starting in November, the Ontario government will have the ability to collect information on who’s prescribing how many pills to whom, and where those prescriptions are getting filled.
Regulations attached to the province’s planned prescription database, which has been in the works for months, passed cabinet Wednesday. That means that this fall in theory – and this winter in practice, because that’s when the database will be fully functional – the province can start tracking prescriptions and, eventually, clamp down on what Health Minister Deb Matthews calls an urgent problem with over-prescribed narcotics.
Painkiller deaths double in Ontario
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Painkillers are causing twice the number of overdose deaths they were two decades ago, a new study has revealed. And most of those who died obtained the medications through a doctor’s prescription and had seen a physician within the last month of their life.
The increase mirrors a dramatic rise in prescriptions for oxycodone. The potent opiate, found in OxyContin and Percocet, has proliferated in an epidemic of chronic pain turning Canadians into a nation of pill-poppers – using more prescription opioids per capita than any country but the United States and Belgium.
It’s an indication that many doctors have underestimated the power and complexity of prescription opioids, and their ability to harm as well as help, said Irfan Dhalla, a doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the report’s primary author.
Ontario cracking down on prescription pill abuse
Friday, November 20, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
In the face of Canada’s growing pill problem, Ontario is moving to change the way opioids are prescribed and monitored.
New regulations to be put in place in the coming months would crack down on prescription abuse and set new benchmarks for how these pills should be doled out in an attempt to deal with the growing numbers of people getting hooked on painkillers across the country.
Addiction experts say the changes are badly needed and should have come a decade ago.
Private-clinic patients jump the line for flu shot
Monday, November 2, 2009 – Globe and Mail
KAREN HOWLETT, ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND DAWN WALTON
TORONTO and CALGARY — Patients at private medical clinics in at least two provinces have jumped the queue for H1N1 vaccine during a nationwide shortage of the flu shot, rekindling a debate about the perils of two-tier health care in Canada.
Copeman Healthcare, a private clinic in Vancouver that charges patients annual membership fees of $3,900 in the first year, has already received its first shipment of H1N1 vaccine and is hoping for more soon, said chief operating officer Chris Nedelmann.
Medcan, a clinic in downtown Toronto that charges just under $2,000 for a head-to-toe checkup, received 3,000 doses last Friday, enough for 8 per cent of its patients.
a business of misfits 