Health ministers united in calling for federal funding certainty despite extension - Winnipeg Sun

WINNIPEG — Provincial and territorial health ministers are still pushing for clarity on federal funding despite a one-year extension on some programs, Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Thursday. Speaking as host of the meeting of ministers in Winnipeg, Asagwara said federal confirmation of the extension is a first step but nothing more. “We are unified in stating very clearly that we need to go much further than that,” they said. “We have been asking very consistently for full clarity on all of the bilateral agreements and the Canada Health Transfer, and we remain unified in that ask.”Federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel announced an extension of funding on social media late Wednesday. She said it represents $1.2 billion in funding for mental health, addictions and home care. The existing funding was set to expire next year. The funding doesn’t add any new programming and doesn’t provide the certainty needed to plan long-term, said Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones.

European Medical Journal news storyPeople living with HIV may experience subtle changes in heart muscle function even when conventional measures of cardiac performance remain normal, according to findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis. Researchers identified significantly impaired global longitudinal strain (GLS) among people with HIV compared with HIV-uninfected individuals, despite preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in both groups. The findings suggest that speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) could provide additional information about early myocardial dysfunction in this population. Read the full news story here.

Among cancer patients, the high financial cost of cancer care is a prevalent problem. This financial burden is also associated with potentially harmful behavioral strategies that patients might use to cope with costs, such as delaying or forgoing treatment and skipping medications. Collectively, researchers refer to this impact as financial toxicity.