Oct. 11, 2013 – Global News
Ottawa could face a legal showdown with some of Vancouver’s hardest-core addicts as they’re cut off from government-supplied heroin doctors say is their only viable treatment option.
Health Canada
Reality check: Is Health Canada giving addicts free heroin?
Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
The short answer is yes. Kinda: Health Canada has approved funding for medically administered heroin for 16 addicts – and only these 16 – under its Special Access Program. The program’s designed to provide nonmarketed drugs to people suffering from “serious or life-threatening conditions when conventional therapies have failed, are unsuitable, or unavailable.”
It has since been slammed by Health Minister Rona Ambrose on the grounds that its decision contradicts Conservative government policy.
Fearing advocacy, Ottawa rejects HIV/AIDS funding proposals
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
August 7, 2012 – Globe and Mail
Health Canada has turned down funding for an HIV/AIDS charity for fear it might result in advocacy – an indication of a growing tendency within the Conservative government to steer clear of groups pushing causes out of step with its policies.
How chronic drug shortages became Canada’s new normal
Karen Reeves, who was diagnosed with epilepsy 11 years ago, is photographed at her home in Waterloo, Ont. Thursday, March 29, 2012. Reeves has struggled to get epilepsy drugs and is now forced to travel to Florida every 3 months to fill her prescription.
Photo by Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY and KIM MACKRAEL
When the only drug that effectively stopped Karen Reeves’s seizures became unavailable in Canada, she didn’t find out until her pharmacist couldn’t fill her prescription – the medication wasn’t there. Replacement shipments never showed up.
Welcome to the new normal of prescription drug supplies.
a business of misfits 