index public health crisis

[Link] New Zealand to ban smoking for next generation in bid to outlaw habit by 2025

Read: 9/12/2021 www.theguardian.com

New Zealand has announced it will outlaw smoking for the next generation, so that those who are aged 14 and under today will never be legally able to buy tobacco.

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[Link] Sam lives in Tasmania but has to fly to Melbourne to get the ADHD help he needs

Read: 6/12/2021 www.abc.net.au

Tasmania has just one specialist ADHD clinic servicing the whole state and only three psychiatrists that will take ADHD patients. For Mr Mitchell, it meant he resorted to visiting a psychiatrist in Victoria to manage his disorder.

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[Link] The ‘backbone’ of regional Australia under strain as volunteer groups suffer pandemic burnout

Read: 29/11/2021 www.theguardian.com

The cumulative effect of natural disasters and the Covid-19 pandemic has increased fatigue and stress among volunteers in regional Australia, making it harder for them to provide essential support within the community, a study has found.

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[Link] Tonga’s drug crisis: Why a tiny Pacific island is struggling with a meth epidemic

Read: 28/11/2021 www.theguardian.com

After more than four decades spent living in New Zealand, Ned Cook knew it was time to return to his home country of Tonga. His country was in the grip of a methamphetamine epidemic that was ripping families apart and overrunning the country’s hospitals and jails.

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[Link] SA Health tells hospitals to take in patients quickly to avoid ramping in 'gaslighting' move

Read: 26/11/2021 www.abc.net.au

SA Health has issued a direction ordering the state's hospitals to ensure no ambulance transfers exceed one hour. The health system has been dealing with an ongoing ramping crisis with some patients spending five hours in the back of an ambulance earlier this week.

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[Link] After Sierra Leone Explosion, a Health System Is Strained

Read: 15/11/2021 www.nytimes.com

Victims are still dying from injuries after a fuel tanker burst into flames last week in Sierra Leone, a country that has no burn units.

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[Link] Australian governments urged to set a date to ban cigarette retail sales

Read: 15/11/2021 www.theguardian.com

Governments must set a date for banning the sale of cigarettes through retailers including supermarkets, and find new ways of boosting revenue without relying on tobacco excise taxes, leading public health researchers say.

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[Link] Tucker Carlson Pumped Full of Fentanyl, Emerges With New Understanding of the Opioid Crisis

Read: 4/11/2021 www.vice.com

Something happened to Tucker Carlson Monday morning that caused him to get emergency back surgery later in the week. It was, he said, according to recording obtained by Motherboard, “one of the most traumatic things that’s ever happened to me in my whole life, ever.”

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[Link] Sure Looks Like Democrats Are Killing Paid Family Leave to Please Joe Manchin

Read: 28/10/2021 www.vice.com

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. Democrats have been toiling to push through their own New Deal—a massive social spending bill covering climate, health, and child care—and secure President Joe Biden’s legacy.

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[Link] Mac Miller’s Drug Supplier Admits to Distributing Fentanyl-Laced Pills

Read: 27/10/2021 www.vice.com

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. Stephen Andrew Walter—one of three men charged in connection with Miller’s death—agreed to a plea deal Monday, according to court documents filed in federal court in the Central District of California.

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[Link] Former Adviser Says Trump Let Thousands Die of COVID for no Reason

Read: 27/10/2021 www.vice.com

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. One of former President Donald Trump’s key coronavirus advisers thinks his administration could have prevented up to 40 percent of U.S. coronavirus deaths with a better pandemic response.

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[Link] Brazil's Bolsonaro May Face ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ Charge Over COVID

Read: 20/10/2021 www.vice.com

A panel of Brazilian lawmakers recommended Wednesday that President Jair Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity” due to his government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Brazil has been one of the world’s most hard hit countries with over 600,000 dead since the pandemic began.

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[Link] Texas governor bans all vaccine mandates, including from private businesses

Read: 13/10/2021 arstechnica.com

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order late Monday prohibiting all state entities, including private businesses, from requiring people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

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[Link] Unvaccinated patients are getting kicked off organ transplant waitlists

Read: 13/10/2021 arstechnica.com

A growing number of medical facilities across the country are directing coveted organ donations to patients who have been vaccinated against COVID-19, pushing people who remain unvaccinated down or even off of transplantation waitlists.

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[Link] Advocates say it's 'safer than smoking', but researchers find 'suite' of harmful chemicals in vaping products

Read: 11/10/2021 www.abc.net.au

They are flavoured, colourful and popular with teenagers, but new Australian research is discovering mounting evidence that vapes are also unsafe to use.

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[Link] Coronavirus report warned of impact on UK four years before pandemic

Read: 9/10/2021 www.theguardian.com

Senior health officials who war-gamed the impact of a coronavirus hitting the UK, warned four years before the onset of Covid-19 of the need for stockpiles of PPE, a computerised contact tracing system and screening for foreign travellers, the Guardian can reveal.

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[Link] The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Was a Total COVID Disaster—Again

Read: 27/8/2021 www.vice.com

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. It turns out that when hundreds of thousands of people get together during a global pandemic, hospitals are going to suffer the consequences. And South Dakota is learning that for the second year in a row. 

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[Link] First China, Now India: How Drug Cartels Get Chemicals for Meth and Fentanyl

Read: 26/8/2021 www.vice.com

Restrictions in China have pushed drug traffickers to source the chemical “precursors” they need in India. Shopping for the chemical ingredients used to make fentanyl, methamphetamine, and other illicit synthetic drugs is still easy—if you know where to look.

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[Link] Live: Virus has breached St George hospital cancer ward, NSW Health confirms

Read: 17/8/2021 www.abc.net.au

NSW Health authorities have confirmed that several patients and staff members from St George Hospital's oncology ward have tested positive to coronavirus.

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[Link] Mississippi Hospitals Are on the Brink of ‘Total Failure’ Because of the Delta Variant

Read: 15/8/2021 www.vice.com

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.

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[Link] It’s Back to School in the Apocalypse, and Parents Are Losing Their Minds

Read: 15/8/2021 www.vice.com

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. It’s back-to-school season during the apocalypse, and Americans are celebrating by losing their minds.

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[Link] Aunty Joyce has spent decades standing up for her regional community — her latest fight is more personal

Read: 13/8/2021 www.abc.net.au

At 94, Joyce Williams has defied the odds. Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains the images and names of Indigenous people who have died.

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[Link] As paramedics in south-west Sydney we are pushed beyond exhaustion – and into a dystopian world

Read: 7/8/2021 www.theguardian.com

It’s been nearly 18 months since I wrote about Covid-19 first hitting our shores and spreading to our suburbs. The transmissibility and virulence of the Delta strain has pushed the ambulance service beyond the brink of exhaustion.

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[Link] Johnson makes ‘unbelievably crass’ joke about Thatcher closing coal mines

Read: 7/8/2021 www.theguardian.com

On a visit to Scotland on Thursday, the prime minister made a number of provocative comments, stating that a second referendum on Scottish independence is “about as far from the top of my agenda as it is possible to be”.

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