[BRIEF NOTE] Back from Niagara

Niagara was spectacular, as usual. Photos will be uploaded.

This time, it struck me that apart from hosting the huge waterfalls and a deep and wide millennia-old gorge that Prince Edward Island just can't physically accomodate, the actual city of Niagara Falls is not only like other small cities in Ontario but like Prince Edward Island's Charlottetown in the layout of its population and the structure of its economy. I'll have to take a closer look at Charlottetown's situation when I visit the Island this weekend.

[BRIEF NOTE] So many friends

I was taken aback by some paragraphs in this Associated Press article reproduced in The Toronto Star about the selection of Michael Suleiman as president of Lebanon.

Fierce bursts of celebratory gunfire erupted throughout the capital after the parliamentary vote and fireworks filled the night sky.

"I call on you all, political forces and citizens, to build a Lebanon we all agree on, setting the interests of Lebanon above our individual interests," Suleiman told lawmakers and assembled dignitaries in a televised address. "We paid a dear price for our national unity. Let's preserve it."

Present in the parliamentary chamber were officials representing all the major foreign powers that have tried to resolve the crisis, including the foreign ministers of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and France, and a delegation of U.S. lawmakers. All consider Lebanon part of their cultural, economic and political sphere of influence.

With so many countries profoundly interested in the furtherance of their interests in Lebanon (with, admittedly, different countries falling together into one of several groupings), how could Lebanon possibly have a chance?

In possibly related news, since the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon I think that I've noticed an upsurge in the numbers of Lebanese restaurants in Toronto. I wonder what the immigration statistics look like.

[LINK] The quiet plague

I first heard the news of Ontario's Clostridium difficile outbreak, reported to have claimed well over 200 lives in the past year, yesterday. Coincidentally, that's the same day that I picked up Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague. At least now Ontario will (finally!) be tracking this lethal hospital-borne disease organism. Well, soon.

All Ontario hospitals will have to start reporting on the number of cases they have of the potentially deadly C. difficile bacteria starting Sept. 30, Health Minister George Smitherman announced Tuesday as the opposition accused the Liberal government of covering up the extent of the outbreak.

The Conservatives and New Democrats claim Ontario was too slow to come up with a plan to deal with C. difficile after it claimed 2,000 lives in Quebec in 2003, and insist some of the 260 deaths reported so far in seven Ontario hospitals could have been prevented.

They also say the public has a right to know the extent of the C. difficile outbreak in all 157 hospitals in the province - data that Smitherman said Tuesday he simply doesn't have.

"Either your government doesn't know the answer, which certainly speaks to incompetence and a total disregard for patient safety, or this is a coverup by the government," Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer told the legislature. "Either way, what is needed today to give the public some assurance that everything is being done that needs to be done is a thorough, independent investigation."

Smitherman rejected a public inquiry, saying the government and hospital officials already have all the information they need to deal with C. difficile outbreaks, and said an investigation would only delay new patient safety protocols even longer.

[. . .]

Witmer said Tuesday she couldn't understand why Smitherman isn't ordering hospitals to immediately report outbreaks of C. difficile.

"The data is readily available," she said. "If anyone calls a hospital, they can give you the number of patients who have had C. difficile, the number of patients who have died. I can't believe that the Ministry of Health doesn't have all of those figures readily available."