Latest news with #emergencydoctors
CBC
5 days ago
- Climate
- CBC
Number of deaths during Montreal heat wave up to 3, public health officials say
Social Sharing Montreal public health officials say three people have died as a result of the extreme heat in recent days. A spokesperson for the local health agency confirmed two new deaths after one was reported on Tuesday. A heat warning had been in effect in Montreal and other parts of southern Quebec, after days of the humidex hovering at around 40 C. Montreal public health issued a notice to emergency room doctors on Sunday, asking them to report any deaths believed to be caused by the heat. On Wednesday, Montreal public health also said two heat strokes had been recorded in hospitals due week. The sweltering humidity has since subsided. The Environment Canada forecast is calling for a high of 28 C on Thursday. With the humidex, it'll feel more like 33 C. According to Montreal public health officials, there has been a total of seven heat-related deaths on the island this year.
ABC News
09-08-2025
- ABC News
Hang-gliding instructor could barely walk, now teaches people to fly
Every weekend, Lisa Bradley soars thousands of metres above Queensland's stunning Scenic Rim, chasing pockets of air that pull her even higher. But while she happily flies now, 27 years ago Lisa worried she wouldn't even be able to walk. "I got run over by a four-wheel-drive and my left leg actually got fully dislocated off," she said. "I couldn't feel it anymore." Lisa, then 21, was training for a major multi-sports competition near her home in Queenstown, in New Zealand, when the accident happened. Rushed to hospital, Lisa said emergency doctors considered amputating her leg. Thankfully, surgeons were able to save her limb, but gave her a grim prognosis. "It was really gutting. "But I say, 'One door shut, another one opened.'" Recovering in hospital, Lisa said she received an unexpected visitor — the driver who ran over her. "I think he felt quite guilty, so he started seeing me all the time," she said. "We ended up dating for two years." Better yet, he was a tandem paraglider and took Lisa for a flight as soon as she could walk. "You're so far from the earth, you feel so free," she said. "You're riding currents that you can't see, but you can feel. "You do feel like you're a bird, you feel connected." Lisa was "hooked" and started paragliding every day, even during lunch breaks at her retail job. "I was good at selling because I was so happy all the time," she said. Lisa then learned how to hang glide, which involves pilots flying underneath a rigid, triangular frame rather than under a parachute-like wing. But she said that drew protests from her boyfriend, as hang gliding had a much bigger physical strain on her injured leg. "I did my first solo and I was so happy, but I couldn't tell him, so I thought it [was] probably time to move on." Over the years, Lisa's passion for hang gliding and paragliding grew stronger. So much so that she has built a three-decade career as a paragliding and hang-gliding instructor. She has also competed in international competitions. Now based near Beaudesert in Queensland, Lisa has seen the number of young people learning to hang glide drop significantly. She said rising insurance premiums, membership fees for clubs, and the cost of equipment had made "a lot of instructors drop out of the sport". "Most instructors only put through six people a year, so if you're paying thousands and thousands of dollars in insurance, you're not even going to be getting it back. "The sport is not looking real good." Hang gliding grew in popularity from the 1960s but enthusiasts began shifting towards paragliding in the 1990s, according to the Sports Aviation Federation of Australia [SAFA]. "A paraglider is a bit more convenient to set up. It only takes five or 10 minutes compared to half an hour or an hour for some of the more advanced hang gliders," SAFA president Alistair Dickie said. Alistair said about a quarter of SAFA's 3,000 members were hang gliders, while around 75 per cent were paragliders. He estimates there are fewer than 10 hang-gliding schools left in Australia. While there are some perceptions that hang gliding and paragliding are dangerous, Lisa said the sport was as "safe as you want to make it". "If you fly in the wrong conditions or with equipment that's not good, well, you're asking for trouble." A 2021 study of injury-related fatalities in Australian sport by researchers at Edith Cowan University found that more people died in skydiving and parachuting accidents over a 19-year period. Between July 2000 and December 2019, there were 20 deaths linked to unpowered hang gliding, and 19 deaths linked to unpowered paragliding — equating to one death per year in each sport. However, over the same period, there were 36 deaths linked to skydiving and parachuting, and 23 deaths of people participating in aerobatics. Alistair said the number of safety tests conducted on paragliding equipment had increased significantly in recent decades. Another factor that could be contributing to the declining participation in paragliding and hang gliding is the costs associated with them. Alistair said that while they were cheaper than other forms of aviation, anyone wanting to take up either sport would have to find about $10,000 to buy the gear and undergo training. But he said the feeling of soaring across the sky was unmatched. "Stepping off the hill late in the day into air that's going up, and floating around — soaring — is just so relaxing and lovely." Lisa described hang gliding as amazing, but it required participants to be strong. "You need to be fit and fully committed," she said. "It needs to be in the public eye more because if you don't see it, people don't even think about it."
Al Jazeera
30-07-2025
- Health
- Al Jazeera
‘They chase ambulances:' Russia's ‘record' attacks on Ukraine's healthcare
Kyiv, Ukraine – As luck would have it, emergency doctor Elina Dovzhenko was far enough from her vehicle when a Russian drone struck it, breaking the windshield and splattering pieces of shrapnel around. It was getting dark on July 9 in the bombed-out, nearly-abandoned city of Kupiansk which sits less than 5km (3 miles) from the front line in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv – and just 40km (25 miles) west of the Russian border. But there was definitely enough light left for the Russian drone operator on the front line's opposite side to see that Dovzhenko's vehicle was a white ambulance with red stripes parked near a shelling-damaged hospital where she and her colleagues were. 'We heard the drone move, it swirled and swirled around [the building], then we heard the blast,' Dovzhenko, 29, told Al Jazeera. She and her colleagues were shocked and angry – but not surprised. They have been hearing regularly about Russian drones targeting ambulances, rescue workers and the people they were rescuing, mostly the elderly who refused to leave their homes, pets, kitchen gardens and family graves. 'They chase ambulances every other day. They definitely targeted us,' Denys Raievskyi, a 30-year-old paramedic and Dovzhenko's ambulance partner, told Al Jazeera. Their job is among the most dangerous professions in wartime Ukraine – some 200 ambulances have been damaged or destroyed by Russian shelling attacks each year since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in April. 'Ambulance workers and other personnel servicing health transport face a risk of injury and death three times higher than that of other healthcare service workers,' it said. Premeditated, systematic attacks on ambulances are part of the Kremlin's wider strategy to destroy Ukraine's medical facilities and deprive millions of access to healthcare exacerbating their stress as well as physical and mental health problems. Some 68 percent of Ukrainians already report a decline in their health compared with the pre-war period, the WHO said, and 46 percent are concerned about their mental health. The WHO did not specify the number of casualties among ambulance workers, but said that since 2022 it has verified 1,682 attacks on healthcare facilities and workers in Ukraine that have resulted in 128 deaths and 288 injuries of health professionals and their patients. Children in the line of fire In an earlier assessment last August, it said the number of attacks was 'the highest number WHO has ever recorded in any humanitarian emergency globally'. 'These attacks are a deliberate crime against humanity aimed at destroying civilians and those who stand on the front line fighting for [their] lives,' Ukraine's Health Ministry said in July 2024. The statement followed last year's July 8 strike that killed two hospital workers, wounded eight children and injured hundreds in Okhmatdyd, Ukraine's largest children's hospital in Kyiv. Russia used an X-101 missile that flies low to avoid detection and air defence, manoeuvres mid-flight and hits its target with a 10-metre (33ft) accuracy even if launched from 5,500km (3,420 miles) away. Moscow routinely denies responsibility for deliberate attacks on healthcare, claiming it only strikes military sites and personnel. International relief groups say they are aware of the gravity of the situation and are ready to keep supporting Ukraine's healthcare. 'Unfortunately, these types of situation are not new,' Giorgio Trombatore, regional director for Eastern Europe with Project Hope, an international humanitarian group, told Al Jazeera. 'But we are resilient, we're going to continue.' The group maintains 13 ambulances in four Ukrainian regions, five of them in Kharkiv – including the one struck by the drone in Kupiansk. Other ambulances have also encountered drones in recent months, but the teams were not hurt. 'That's something you cannot escape; eventually you need to be prepared,' Trombatore said. 'Luckily, we didn't report casualties from our team.' His group also provides helmets and flak jackets, and some of the ambulances are bulletproof – something that helps counter Russia's tactic of repeated strikes. In one case, a Russian drone attack killed a civilian and wounded another in the village of Stetsivka in the northern region of Sumy on July 14. After the ambulance team, supported by Project HOPE, arrived, a second drone exploded 2 metres (7ft) away from the vehicle. 'What saved them is that the vehicle was bulletproof,' Project HOPE's spokesman Artem Murach told Al Jazeera. 'Hope and faith' The city of Kupiansk straddles both banks of the slow and strategically-located Oskil river, and once boasted a dozen factories, several colleges and a population of 22,000. But days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, the mayor surrendered the town and it became the de facto administrative centre of the Moscow-occupied chunk of the Kharkiv region. The Russians were kicked out six months later during a daring Ukrainian counter-offensive. But the town remained within reach of Russian artillery, drones and missiles, which have killed dozens of civilians, wounded hundreds and damaged almost every building. Most of the residents – along with police officers, fire brigades and government officials – fled Kupiansk in early 2023 when Russian forces began approaching again. But about 1,200 people – or about 7 percent of the pre-war population – remained. 'They're scared to leave, they have no relatives to host them, they say, 'I'd better die here, because it's home,'' paramedic Raievskyi said. He is no stranger to Russian pummelling – he lives with his wife in Saltivka, the most shelling-damaged region of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city some 120km (75 miles) east of Kupiansk. Raievskyi's ambulance travels up to 1.5 hours to help the sick and the wounded, despite the almost constant shelling and omnipresent drones. But no matter how severe their wounds are, he and his colleagues can't treat their patients on the spot, especially if they have been hurt by a drone, because another strike is always a possibility. One life-saving solution – a portable electronic jamming system that scrambles the drones' navigation systems – no longer works in the Kharkiv region because Russians attach kilometres-long fibre-optic cables to their loitering munitions. 'Unfortunately, in Kupiansk all the Russian drones are fibre-optic,' his partner Dovzhenko said.
Health Line
11-07-2025
- Health
- Health Line
Summer Cleaning Guide: Less Intense Than Spring, but Still a Must
Spring cleaning is trendier, but there are plenty of cleaning tasks for every season. Here are a few chores to check off your list for summer. A cleaning must-have For almost every category below, vinegar is a star player. It's a reliable household cleaner that we recommend keeping stocked in your pantry. A few things to keep in mind: Never mix vinegar with bleach. 5% is usually enough for general cleaning. If you use higher acidity percentages, dilute more. Vinegar is a natural cleaner, but it's acidic and can still be harsh on some surfaces (like natural stone). Make your grill cleaner and safer You may be gathering more to grill with friends and neighbors, or you may not want to run your oven indoors, adding extra heat to your home. Either way, deep clean your grill if it's been a while. You can clean the grates by soaking them in a 2:1 ratio of vinegar and baking soda overnight. But perhaps more importantly, your metal wire grill brush has to go. Pitch it. Safer alternatives are available and relatively cheap. Doctors — especially emergency doctors — are increasingly warning against metal grill brushes. The American College of Surgeons details an example case from 2023 that required emergency surgery. And a 2016 research review found that between 2002 and 2014, nearly 1,700 people got injured from those little bristles getting into their food and, therefore, their mouths, intestines, and, yes, bowels. Researchers also reported that these types of injuries tend to spike in summer months when grilling is more frequent. A pediatric emergency room doctor detailed an interesting but scary case that even affected a child's ear. The consensus: This type of injury may not be as common as others, but given it's totally preventable (and more common than you might think), it's a good idea to ditch the wire grill brush. Everything else to clean this summer Wipe down baseboards Summer activities have likely tracked in extra dirt and dust in these easily ignored crevices. Keep disinfecting high touch areas Think doorknobs, light switches, cabinet and fridge handles, remotes — in addition to countertops and tables (If you want to upgrade your disinfectant, try Force of Nature). Vacuum and dust more often More foot traffic in and out means more allergens and coming indoors, too. Upping your vacuum frequency can help, even if you tackle small sections here and there. Dust out-of-sight surfaces Think of spaces like like the top of your refrigerator, the tops of cabinets, inside cabinets you don't use often, higher pantry shelves, and around door frames. Oven deep clean You may be grilling outside more and using your oven less, so consider doing a deep clean before cooler months and holidays hit. Patio furniture If you have an air compressor, it's great for blasting out dust and dirt in the fabric since these items may be getting more use. Cobweb control Look up, and use a long vertical duster to grab any cobwebs and clear out areas where the ceiling meets the wall.
