Tag Archives: Ministry of Health

Health

B.C. moves to attract foreign nurses to overcome critical staffing crisis

By Fabian Dawson, New Canadian Media, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Desperate for healthcare workers, British Columbia announced today a series of initiatives, including bursaries of $16,000 each for 1,500 internationally educated nurses (IENs), to enter the province’s health system.

The $9 million in bursaries will go towards helping IENs get registered and licensed faster in B.C., the provincial ministry of health said in a  statement .

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Health

BC Outlines Plan to Begin Lifting COVID-19 Restrictions

By Moira Wyton, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

British Columbia’s indoor mask mandate and vaccine card will remain in place as the province begins to ease pandemic public health orders on  Thursday and transition to a strategy focused on personal risk  management.

The Omicron variant, which  took hold amid loosened public health measures and drove the province’s  fifth wave of COVID-19, is waning enough to look at a less “restrictive”  means of pandemic management, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie  Henry said Tuesday.

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Health

BC Should Be Doing More Rapid Testing, Experts Say

By Moira Wyton, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As the highly transmissible Omicron variant takes hold, British Columbia is one of the only provinces not making rapid antigen tests  widely available to the public.

Rapid tests can be  administered at home and measure whether someone has COVID-19 and is  likely to infect others. They return results in as little as 15 minutes.

B.C. has received three kinds of tests from  the federal government: Abbott ID Now, Abbott PanBio and BD Veritor.  None are packaged for use at home.

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Health, Indigenous Nations

Workers tackling anti-Indigenous racism: scapegoating and ‘backlash’ at Island Health

By Odette Auger, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, also Lindsay Sample and Emilee Gilpin, the Discourse

Several current and former staff at Island Health are raising concerns after what they say has been a dismantling of the Indigenous Health department’s cultural safety facilitation team.

The staff allege that during the province’s 2020 investigation into Indigenous-specific racism in the health care system detrimental changes were made to their team. This included the firing of long-time cultural safety facilitator and then-Acting South Island Manager of Indigenous Health, Yvette Ringham-Cowan.

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