Wayne Kondro

The fiendish puzzle of health inequities

Medieval cartographers once depicted monsters and bogs on the borders of their maps, as if foraying into uncharted territories put one at risk of unimaginable and unpredictable consequences. It might be said that Canada’s physicians find themselves in a bit of that predicament after embracing the

Medical data debates: Big is better? Small is beautiful?

Canada Health Infoway’s plans for highly centralized electronic health records (EHR) systems within each province containing patient records that can be shared nationwide may not be feasible, a chorus of experts say. That “shared record” model which Infoway has adopted was in large part

Medical errors increasing because of complexity of care and breakdown in doctor–patient relationship, physician consultant says

The message was direct: many a doctor is out of sync with patients and as a consequence often does them a disservice or makes preventable medical mistakes. The paradigm for the doctor–patient medical relationship must be revised to account for the explosion of medical information, as well as the

Dispensing antivirals in underserved communities

University of Manitoba Associate Professor of Medicine Dr. Anand Kumar boils it down to a simple case of bureaucracy versus good health care in any outbreak of pandemic (H1N1) 2009. It’s an issue that has been brewing for weeks: Should community health workers, paramedics or other officials

Canada needs paradigm shift in public health nutrition.

The refrain was common: lots of talk, little action. Whether regulating trans fats and salt, adequately labelling foods, or taxing potato chips and other calorie-rich snacks, initiatives around the world are sparse and successes sparser still, delegates to an international conference on public

Federal budget light on initiatives for health, research

The central message in the federal government’s Mar. 4 budget was simple and straightforward: Canadians must brace for deficit-reducing budget cuts — but not just yet. “Canadian families and business have accepted the need for restraint. Fairness requires that government too should have to

Health Canada contemplates providing food industry with “discretionary” authority to fortify junk foods

Fortified junk food, from potato chips to energy bars to fruit-flavoured drinks, may soon be appearing on grocery store shelves across Canada. But it’s still junk food, warn dietitians and other health professionals, who fear that a Health Canada proposal to allow vitamin and mineral (iron,

Conflict emerges over value of handwashing

There’s no evidence that good hand hygiene practices prevent influenza transmission, according to a Council of Canadian Academies report commissioned by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). But N95 particulate respirator-type masks are a proven “final layer of protection” against even

Research misconduct agency would undermine "academic self-governance," study says.

There’s no need for any manner of national oversight and investigatory agency to handle research misconduct, according to a report commissioned by the Canadian Research Integrity Committee (CRIC), a loose affiliation of 16 research and academic bodies, including the three granting councils and the

Trends in the profile of the Canadian physician pool

The national physician pool is a bit older but fractionally larger than it was 5 years ago. Its also more likely that Canadians will be treated by a female physician, by someone who was educated outside of Canada or someone who has returned home to hang up a shingle after a stint abroad. Its more