Preventative medicine vs. COVID
While BC focuses on even more COVID restrictions, the province s health critic says we ve failed to maximize preventative medicine, antibody therapy and rapid testing as ways to curb the virus. If we re going to get serious about this we have to look beyond health orders and restrictions, said Renee Merrifield, who is also the Liberal MLA for Kelowna-Mission. Preventative measures are huge. I take 5,000 international units a day of vitamin D because there s a direct correlation between it boosting your immune system and fighting off COVID.
Our bodies naturally make vitamin D from sunlight on your skin and we can also get it from fatty fish like tuna and salmon, cheese, egg yolks and fortified orange juice, cereal and soy milk.
The mental health tsunami is coming
BC s health critic Renee Merrifield has taken to describing the province s exploding mental health crisis as a tsunami .
Tsunami is the Japanese word for the overwhelming and destructive torrent of water and debris that surges ashore after an undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption.
In this metaphor, the seemingly endless COVID pandemic is the horrendous seismic shift and a litany of mental health problems is the resulting damage. Definitely, the next pandemic will be a mental health tsunami, said Merrifield, who is also the Liberal MLA for Kelowna-Mission. Almost everyone is affected, but the real victims are youth. A study by BC Children s Hospital shows two-thirds of youth are suffering with mental health issues. That s up from 20 to 40% pre-pandemic. That s a massive increase and means a massive number of youth are struggling.
Why is BC s vaccination program lagging so far behind?
Provincial health critic Renee Merrifield is going to continue to clang the alarm bell, loudly, until someone not only listens, but takes action. Of course, I m going to sound the alarm again and again and again, said Merrifield, who is also the Liberal MLA for Kelowna-Mission. BC needs to distribute the COVID vaccine faster.
What s most alarming to Merrifield is that only select pharmacies throughout the province are administering the vaccine when every pharmacy and pharmacist is ready, willing and able. There are 1,400 pharmacies in BC and every pharmacist is willing, said Merrifield.