A Vancouver Coastal Health review has found that Richmond General Hospital was not at fault in the death of a Richmond woman who died of the H1N1 virus after twice being sent home from hospital.

Mae Mah, 51, died on Nov. 1, hours after being sent home from the Richmond hospital. She had also been to the hospital the day before.

Mah had asthma, and had been experiencing breathing problems and fever, but H1N1 was not diagnosed until after her death.

James Nesbitt, a VCH spokesman, said that “ from Vancouver Coastal’s point of view, there is no indication of negligence on the part of any staff.”

But he said the health authority will meet with the family in December at their request, “as a final step before the review can be complete.”

Nesbitt said all factors are taken into consideration when a VCH review is conducted.

To get an accurate picture, Nesbitt said VCH looked at the patient’s underlying health conditions, and other treatments, the presence of H1N1 virus, and spoke to doctors, nurses and hospital administrators.

“The individual was in a high risk group for H1N1; she was asthmatic,” said Nesbitt.

“VCH is reminding everyone who hasn’t been inoculated to get an H1N1 shot

 I think that the doctors and nurses should have kept this lady at the hospital and examine her more. They probably could have done some critical for her breathing problems. What do you think about this in your opinion?

The amount of television usage by children reached an eight-year high, with kids ages 2 to 5 watching the screen for more than 32 hours a week on average and those ages 6 to 11 watching more than 28 hours. The analysis, based on the fourth quarter of 2008, measured children’s consumption of live and recorded TV, as well as VCR and game console usage.

“They’re using all the technology available in their households,” said Patricia McDonough, Nielsen’s senior vice president of insights, analysis and policy. “They’re using the DVD, they’re on the Internet. They’re not giving up any media – they’re just picking up more.”

The increase in consumption is in part the result of more programming targeted at kids, she said, including video on demand, which is particularly popular among young children who like to watch their favourite shows over and over again.

“When I was a kid, I had Saturday morning cartoons,” McDonough said. “And now there are programs they want to watch available to them whenever they want to watch them.”

The findings alarmed children’s health advocates, who warned that increased television watching is linked to delayed language skills and obesity. A 2007 study by researchers at the University of Washington found that babies who watched videos geared to them learned fewer vocabulary words than infants who never watched the videos.

When kids are plunked in front of a screen, they miss out on critical opportunities to learn from their parents and develop imaginative play, experts said.

“I think parents are clueless about how much media their kids are using and what they’re watching,” said Dr. Vic Strasburger, a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

I can see by reading this article, they do not know that kids use the tv for other things.

Critical Question:

What if students had to go and get a current events ad for homework and they have no newspaper’s or access to the internet? What would they use?

A young Vancouver-born entrepreneur is cashing in on the cellphone driving ban with a wireless-enabled wristwatch that keeps BlackBerry users updated on their messages and calls.

The inPulse wireless-enabled wristwatch that keeps Blackberry users updated on their messages and calls.

Eric Migicovsky, who left Vancouver to study at the University of Waterloo and launched the startup Allerta Inc. there, released the inPulse wristwatch yesterday to coincide with Ontario’s newly introduced ban and just ahead of British Columbia’s proposed ban.

The $149 inPulse watch connects via Bluetooth wireless to the BlackBerry smartphone, delivering alerts for incoming e-mails, text messages and calls. It also vibrates to alert users to incoming calls.

The inPulse started as a team project when Migicovsky, 23, was in university.

“During your fourth year of engineering, you get to work on a design project of your own and we were working on a BlackBerry accessory,” said Migicovsky, who studied systems design engineering in the co-op program at the University of Waterloo.

“We started with the business community; we got a lot of good feedback and we had a lot of requests to make this into a product.”

Migicovsky came up with the idea for the inPulse while he was on a year-long exchange studying design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and he worried he’d lose his phone while biking over cobblestones near canals.

Migicovsky said when he graduated, he and a team of five other engineers created a company to turn the university project into a product. “Over the last 10 months we have been working at shifting from hardware that we hacked together for a school project and turning it into a real production device,” he said.

They are launching the inPulse just as restrictions come into effect in Ontario that make it illegal for drivers to talk, dial, text or e-mail on personal handheld devices, with Ontario the fourth province to introduce such rules. Legislation introduced in B.C. last week to put cellphone restrictions on B.C. drivers comes into effect Jan. 1, 2010.

Migicovsky said the inPulse is being billed as a BlackBberry accessory and not a complete solution for drivers. “You might have a Bluetooth headset for answering calls, but at the moment there is nothing that lets you view e-mail or text messages without holding the Blackberry in your hand,” he said. “You can’t input on the watch, but you can glance at it and see if an e-mail was one from your mother and not a really important business e-mail.

The display on the watch doesn’t show the entire e-mail, just the sender and the subject or part of it depending on the length.

Critical Question:

What if drives use this device, can it  distract them when it vibrates, and can it distract them from the road when they are driving?

Manila and surrounding areas were lashed with heavy rains for nine hours yesterday, leading to flash floods that inundated about 80 per cent of the city of more than 12 million.

Some areas were under seven metres of water, stranding families on rooftops and forcing the government to declare a “state of calamity.”

Highways were turned into raging rivers.

More than 4,000 people have so far been rescued, Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said.

Critical Question:

Will the Government of Manila help restore the town, by giving people places to live?

Basically, people have nothing left now. They are without shelter and food.

Vancouver Coastal Health is investigating after a number of children were hospitalized due to exposure to E. coli — a bacteria that could have been spread at the petting farm at the Pacific National Exhibition.

At least seven children who had been exposed to the bacteria came forward after the 17day fair ended on Labour Day.

E. coli, or Escherichia coli, can cause diarrhea, urinary tract infections, respiratory illness and pneumonia.

Vancouver Coastal Health confirmed the incidents to The Vancouver Sun, but could not provide a medical officer for comment Tuesday evening.

PNE spokeswoman Laura Ballance said VCH told fair organizers Friday it was looking at the cases.

The bacteria is naturally present in the gastrointestinal tracts of grass-feeding animals such as cows and sheep. Some dangerous strains can be spread to humans through fecal matter.

The only way to prevent infection is by hand-washing.

Ballance said the PNE is working with VCH to isolate any source of the bacteria.

Every year at the fair, the building housing animals is equipped with 18 hand-washing stations, including hot running water and hand-sanitizing liquid.

“ We go to the extremes in prevention,” said Ballance.

“You’d be hard-pressed to go anywhere who goes as far as we do.”

If VCH finds the petting farm area is the source of the exposure, any recommendations it makes “would be definitely be put into place for next year’s fair,” she said.

My Opinion:

I think that they should not just sit around and wait till next year’s fair to do something about the E.Coli spread in the PNE petting farm. People should at least do something about it, because what about those seven kids who were exposed to the E.Coli.

 My Questions:

What will happen to the seven kids, who were exposed to the E.Coli?

Can the families of the kids sue the PNE, for the harm of their kids?