CARP NORTH BAY AND DISTRICT CHAPTER 18 FALL 2009 NEWSLETTER
URGENT AND IMPORTANT NEWS
CARP members are urged to attend this upcoming and very timely seminar where you’ll learn about a number of hot issues. The Fall Seminar starts at 10:00am, Thursday, October 15th, 2009, and is being held at Trinity United Church, 111 McIntyre St. E., North Bay, On. Seminar is free to our chapter membership. Chapter memberships are sold at the Seminar for just $5.00. Space is limited so pre registration is recommended. Call Madeline Mantha at 705-752-5338 –10 a.m. Greetings by Madeleine Mantha, opening remarks by president Ron Farrell –10:15 a.m. – Tami Price Fry on maintaining a healthy brain –11 a.m. Short break –11:10 Yvon Montcalm (police force) addresses new policies on drinking & driving, use of cell phones while driving, and other important issues. –12:10 LUNCH – sandwiches, vegetable and fruit platters, variety of desserts, coffee/tea/water –1:00 Andrea McLellen, program manager, North Bay and Parry Sound Health Unit speaks about the Flu and the H1N1 vaccine. Closing remarks by Madeleine Mantha and president Ron Farrell
Interesting tidbits of information
• Our local chapter Board of Directors has had regular monthly board meetings since our May Annual General Meeting, making plans and preparations for upcoming local CARP activities. Following is a summary of information passed on to our chapter from CARP head office:
• July 9, in response to an article in the Globe&Mail, CARP’s Susan Eng wrote:
Tap into the productivity and expertise of older workers but get rid of mandatory retirement and insurance coverage that ends at age 65. Stop wasting untold billions on outmoded methods of healthcare delivery and get going on primary health teams, electronic health records, better home care and support for family caregivers. Set up a universal pension plan so that people can save adequately for their own retirement instead of wringing our hands about old age security “entitlements”. Of course, they’re entitlements – who do you think paid for them all their lives? And by the way, seventy percent of older Canadians vote regularly and now they will be doing that for a lot longer. Stop this intergenerational scapegoating!
• All local chapters of CARP are now receiving a royalty fee from CARP Head Office, for CARP members in their district renewing their memberships. Please note this financial assistance helps our local chapter provide well informed updates and seminars to you, our members.
• In late July, the Ontario government announced that PET scans – a high-tech nuclear scan widely available in the United States and in many Canadian provinces – will be covered under the Ontario public health plan for cancer and cardiac patients by the fall.
Ontario is making positron emission tomography (PET) scanning a publicly insured health service available to cancer and cardiac patients under conditions where PET scans have been proven to be clinically effective. PET scanning is a nuclear medicine diagnostic imaging exam. PET scanning can provide information on both the location and the extent of the metabolic activity of abnormal tissues such as cancer and it has the potential to identify the areas of abnormal metabolic activity that is not always found through the use of MRIs or CT scans. For the services that will be insured, PET is useful in determining the stage or extent of some cancers to aid in treatment decisions. PET has also been determined to be useful in making treatment decisions in certain advanced heart conditions.
