The next COVID-19 vaccine could cost you $110 in Alberta
The Alberta government is changing the COVID-19 vaccine program, including asking most people to pay for the latest shot this fall. Health-care professionals warn vaccination rates could drop further, which could impact the whole system.
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CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Alberta government to increase prescription costs for seniors for first time in 31 years
Social Sharing For the first time in more than three decades, the Alberta government is raising prescription costs for some seniors and Albertans under non-group coverage. Beginning July 1, the maximum co-payment per prescription will gradually increase by $10 over 10 months, from $25 to $35 at a rate of $1 per month. The increase will be fully implemented by April 1, 2026. It's the first time the cost has increased since 1994. Alberta seniors face rising drug prescription costs 2 days ago Duration 2:32 The province is raising out-of-pocket prescription costs for seniors and Albertans under non-group coverage by $10. According to the government, the hike is necessary to keep pace with a seven per cent annual increase in funding for these programs. The province says the hike is necessary to keep pace with rising costs, with the cost of providing coverage for seniors and those in the non-group program increasing by about seven per cent annually. The majority of Alberta seniors will still pay less than seniors in most other provinces, the province said. But for seniors like Marilyn Wieler, 83, the added expense represents more than a minor adjustment. "It's a hardship, people weren't prepared for this. And why the seniors?" Said Wieler, a volunteer at the Mill Woods Seniors and Multicultural Centre. "We're on a limited income. Nobody's giving us extra money, and now they hit us with this. "When you really need it a lot of people can't afford it. That's really unjust." Alberta's non-group coverage provides prescription drug insurance to residents under 65 who aren't covered by an employer or private plan. If the co-payments increased at the same rate of inflation, seniors would be paying $48, according to the government. "The cost to provide this coverage is rising significantly due to factors such as increasing drug prices, population growth, and an aging population. To maintain the long-term sustainability of these programs and keep medications accessible, an increase to the maximum co-payment for seniors is necessary," said the office of the minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services in a statement to CBC. Change adds stress, advocates say Currently, there are about 760,000 Albertans aged 65 and older that have senior drug coverage, though only about five per cent pay the maximum co-payment, the province said. Among the roughly 75,000 Albertans with non-group coverage, about 18 per cent hit the maximum. Low-income seniors can apply for assistance through the province's special needs assistance for seniors program, the province said. Still, advocates and seniors say the change adds stress, especially for those managing multiple prescriptions. "We know that means some people won't access the medications they need. They'll end up sicker, they'll end up in our hospital system and it'll cost us more. That's the story of drugs," said Chris Gallaway, the executive director at Friends of Medicare. "Affordability is a big concern for seniors and everyone, but especially seniors on a fixed income. And by doing something like this, we know it means people won't be able to access the drugs they need. And it means that Albertans will be paying more and more out of pocket for healthcare that should be covered," he said. Rosemary Anderson, another senior at the Millwoods Centre, said she worries about the impact on low-income people. "You choose not to take your diabetic, you choose not to take your blood pressure because you can't afford it" "For wealthy people, $10 is nothing a month, but for a lot of people it is." The cost of administering the seniors and non-group drug programs in 2023-24 was around $1.3 billion. That figure is projected to rise by $194 million to approximately $1.494 billion by 2026-27. The number of seniors in Alberta is expected to nearly double to 1.4 million by 2051. In a statement, Sarah Hoffman, the Opposition health critic, criticized the move. "Because this increase is per prescription, more seniors will be forced into making a choice – medicine or food, or rent, or insurance, or utilities bills, all of which have increased in cost due to this incompetent and cruel UCP government," Hoffman said. "In the end senior's health will suffer, they will need more care because they can't afford medication, and the added strain on the entire health-care system will impact all Albertans."
CBC
5 hours ago
- CBC
Despite 'massive shift' towards smoking over injection, Ontario has only 1 supervised drug inhalation space
Advocates and researchers say Ontario is far behind when it comes to protecting the growing number of drug users in the province who are choosing to inhale opioids rather than inject them. "We know what we need to help support people who smoke their drugs — and we've been really, really behind the curve on it," said Gillian Kolla, an assistant professor of medicine at Memorial University, who studies drug use across Canada. Data shared with CBC Toronto last week from the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner shows that in 2024, just four per cent of deadly opioid overdoses are thought to have been caused by injection alone — down from 20 per cent in 2018. That's the opposite trajectory of the statistics for inhalation alone, which are thought to be responsible for 40 per cent of last year's fatal overdoses — up from 18 per cent in 2018. Though Kolla cautioned that the coroner's data has some uncertainty baked in, since about half of overdose fatalities are listed as having no evidence at all as to what consumption method was used, she said the growing move toward inhalation has been a clear trend in Canada for years. Opioid toxicity deaths in Ontario where inhalation was the only mode of use nearly doubled between 2017 and 2021, according to a study carried out by Kolla and academic colleagues. "We have multiple sources of data that are telling us about this," she told CBC Toronto. "We can see it when we talk to harm reduction programs which distribute equipment to people who use drugs," Kolla said. "And when we talk to people who use drugs about how their use is changing, they are also talking about how they have been moving more towards smoking." Ontario's only supervised inhalation booth The growing need for safer ways to inhale drugs has long been obvious to Joanne Simons, Casey House CEO. Her specialty Toronto hospital, which serves people who have HIV or are at risk of it, runs the province's only supervised inhalation booth, installed in 2021. "It's a very simple setup," Simons said of the small room. "There isn't anything super technical about it other than a very powerful fan that is venting any of the smoke outside of the building." She said the hospital decided to open the booth in the first place because clientele were requesting it, and that since then, about 80 per cent of the people who arrive to use supervised consumption services at Casey House are choosing to inhale over inject. "We're thinking about doing a second one because the need is so great," said Simons, describing the move toward smoking as a "massive shift." Ontario's 2019 consumption and treatment services plan, which approved 15 supervised consumption sites in the province, did not include funding for inhalation booths. At a price tag that Simons estimates around $50,000, that means only supervised consumption services that can solicit private funding and donations — like Casey House — can foot the bill to build one. "Since we've installed it, we have had consistent interest from [other health centres] across the country, in terms of what it does," said Simons. "I think the barrier to entry actually is the funds." The government "does not and will never support the use of illicit drugs in public spaces," said a spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones in a statement. "Our focus is on connecting people struggling with addictions challenges to treatment and recovery, not giving them the tools to use toxic, illegal drugs," Ema Popovic said via email. The safety question A couple of kilometres south of Casey House, at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions in St. Michael's Hospital in downtown Toronto, Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi has been examining the health implications of the shift towards inhalation. The researchers and advocates that spoke to CBC Toronto for this story all said that part of what's been driving changing habits is the belief among people who use drugs that it's safer. So, is it? When it comes to the risks posed by needles specifically, Bayoumi says inhalation would "clearly be safer" since it dodges the possibility of infection via dirty equipment. The risk of overdose may also be lower, he said. "There is some evidence that … the rate at which the drugs accumulate in the blood is slower with smoking than it is with injecting, which allows people to control the amount of drug that they're taking in more precisely," said Bayoumi. Shifting provincial policy Calls to fund safe inhalation sites have been ongoing since Liberal Kathleen Wynne was premier in the mid 2010s, said Zo ë Dodd, co-organizer of the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society. Dodd said her organization set up a supervised inhalation tent in Moss Park in 2017, where they operated unsanctioned for a year. Eventually, they moved indoors and had to give up the tent. "We saw thousands of people through that service. And we reversed many, many overdoses within that tent itself," she said, adding that now, she and other harm reduction workers have to run outside when they're alerted to an inhalation overdose. This spring, Doug Ford's government closed nine supervised drug consumption sites and transitioned them into HART Hubs, their new concept for treating addiction and homelessness. The province invested over $500 million to build 28 HART Hubs across the province, according to the health minister's spokesperson. "HART Hubs will reflect regional priorities, providing community-based, life-saving services including mental health and addiction care, primary care, social and employment services," Popovic said.
CBC
5 hours ago
- CBC
Indigenous people fleeing wildfires face immense mental health burdens. Experts say they shouldn't have to
Social Sharing Jeewa Liske was four months pregnant in August 2023 when she had to flee wildfire smoke in Yellowknife and make a difficult 20-hour drive to safety. "I was wanting to leave just 'cause it was so smoky and it was so hard to breathe," Liske, now 23, recalled of the day the city issued an evacuation order. She said she was barely able to see the sides of the road as she and three friends drove to Edmonton. When they arrived, Liske was torn between staying to be close to family in nearby Leduc, or living with her mother-in-law in Lkwungen territory on Vancouver Island. After about five days in Alberta, she flew to Victoria. Her anxiety was compounded by being separated from her spouse, a crew boss working to fight the fires in the Northwest Territories. Leaving her home meant she also struggled to get prenatal checkups, which she said was stressful. "I was crying a lot. The hormones just made my emotions 10 times worse." Eventually, she says birth workers in N.W.T. connected her with a Victoria midwife and she was relieved to learn her pregnancy was progressing normally. Liske's experience is just one example of how Indigenous people in Canada are disproportionately impacted by wildfires, which researchers say are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change. As a result, they say Indigenous people are particularly vulnerable to being displaced from their communities, and that can take an immense toll on their mental health. Psychologists who've studied disaster recovery and counselled those affected say it's normal to feel fearful and stressed during wildfire evacuation and there are ways to improve evacuations for Indigenous people. Suzanne Stewart, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, says Indigenous communities impacted by wildfires disproportionately experience adverse mental health outcomes partly because they often live in affected areas. That's on top of cultural trauma from being displaced, she said, noting that a relationship with the land is integral to the identity and well-being of Indigenous people. Mental health toll can linger long after wildfire evacuees return home 2 years ago Duration 2:15 Separation from family "I've seen Indigenous individuals and communities spend months staying in temporary quarters in motel rooms hundreds of miles from their home with really no say in when they can return," said Stewart, who has provided counselling and mental health supports to Indigenous people. "Evacuations, in the moment, are emergencies," she said. "Those often cause anxiety." Stewart says the immediate needs of those being evacuated include mental supports such as validating people's feelings, as well as addressing emotional and spiritual needs. Even something as basic as accommodations can have an impact, which she saw when her own family faced evacuations from N.W.T. in 2023. "Many people were evacuated to Alberta and had to stay in places that they wouldn't have chosen to stay if they'd had the resources to make their own decisions." After Liske's evacuation from Yellowknife, she ended up staying in Victoria for six weeks with her Dene mother-in-law, Katłįà Lafferty, along with Lafferty's mother and another family member. Lafferty says she was concerned about how they would get her mother, who has a bad hip, out of her N.W.T. home as the wildfire approached, and they had to convince her to come to Victoria. "If you're getting put up in an evacuation site somewhere that you don't know and you're not with family, it's really scary," she said. WATCH | Wildfire evacuees endure hardship and uncertainty: 'I just want to get home': wildfire evacuees face hardship and uncertainty 3 days ago Duration 2:01 Long journeys from home The 2023 Yellowknife evacuations were one of the examples data co-ordinator Elisa Binon cited in her report on internal displacements — the forced movement of people within countries following disaster, violence or war. Binon, who works with the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, recorded more than 190,000 internal displacements in Canada in 2023 due to disasters like wildfires. Of these, First Nations, Inuit and Métis accounted for about 30,000 displacements, a disproportionate trend that continued in 2024, she said. The report also noted Indigenous Peoples living on reserves made up just five per cent of Canada's population but represented more than 16 per cent of internal displacements due to disasters in 2023, mainly from wildfires. That's because Indigenous people have been historically marginalized, Binon says, noting they have often already been relocated from traditional lands to remote regions more susceptible to natural disasters. "Being in disaster-prone areas means there's more forest, which is kindling for wildfires," she said. Stewart says evacuations can reawaken past trauma from forced relocation due to the First Nations reserve system. Internal displacements can also impact a person's sense of autonomy, Binon says, particularly when they are long lasting and send people far from home. She notes that some Indigenous people are leaving their rural homes for cities for the first time in their lives, which adds to the challenges of being displaced. WATCH | Wildfire evacuees find shelter far from home in Niagara Falls: Wildfire evacuees from northwest Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan arrive in Niagara Falls 12 days ago Duration 2:07 Thousands of Indigenous people from northwest Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have been forced to evacuate their homes and are being relocated to southern Ontario due to wildfires raging across the regions. CBC's Greg Ross spoke with evacuees who arrived in Niagara Falls to shelter. In late May this year, Manitoba wildfires forced the evacuation of more than 21,000 people, many from northern First Nations. With hotels in the province scarce, some evacuees were relocated as far away as Niagara Falls, Ont. Many First Nations leaders urged the province to do more to relocate people closer to home, and the premier now says he's considering using emergency powers to make more area hotels available. Because wildfire related evacuations of Indigenous communities are likely to continue due to climate change, Binon suggests there are ways to improve how they're handled. They include: Allocating resources to ensure specific needs of Indigenous evacuees are met, such as having interpreters available for elders at reception centres. Forming and following Indigenous-based disaster plans, such as the Dene First Nation's 2023 offer to help the Northwest Territories government identify vulnerable people and communicate evacuation plans with them. Continuing Indigenous Services Canada's 2024 partnership with First Nation communities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters. WATCH | An inside look at Indigenous cultural burns: What Canada can learn from how B.C. First Nations prevent wildfire disasters 1 year ago Duration 11:34 First Nations in B.C. are in a race to protect themselves from wildfires, bringing back a tradition that had been banned for decades. CBC's Brady Strachan was invited to the front line of a prescribed or cultural burn to learn more about how it's done and why experts say other communities across Canada need to follow their example. Binon also says governments are increasingly turning to the Indigenous practice of cultural burns — controlled, slow fires — to reduce wildfire risk and enhance biodiversity. She says such "informed and inclusive policies" support recovery and reduce the risk of internal displacement. Liske now lives in Dettah, N.W.T., with her family. Her mother-in-law, Lafferty, is in Victoria but recently visited Yellowknife. "Whenever there's a blue sky, I'm thankful," said Lafferty. "We're not breathing in smoke." Both say when they see smoky skies, it brings a sense of dread related to the 2023 fires, but also this wildfire season. Liske's spouse, who is also Lafferty's son, is currently fighting wildfires in Saskatchewan.
