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The New Lice Wars

Posted by Hannah

Maclean’s Despite evidence that it’s time to abandon the no-nit rule requiring kids be sent home, schools have yet to get the message. When her three-year-old daughter was in daycare, Lisa got her first lice-alert telephone call. There were a slew of calls during senior kindergarten and more in Grade 1. The message was the same each time: Her daughter had nits in her hair and needed to be picked up. Lisa, who lives in Toronto, would postpone client meetings and collect her. “Thank God I work for myself. I have great clients,” says Lisa, who asked that her full … Read more…

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As millions gather for Kumbh Mela, doctors are watching

Posted by Hannah

When a cholera outbreak gripped a London neighbourhood in 1854, physician John Snow carefully mapped its deaths. The thin bars he traced under each address clustered around a water pump on Broad Street, which turned out to be the source of the bacteria. Snow’s studies of disease patterns won him recognition as the father of modern epidemiology—and crushed the prevailing theory that cholera was spread by bad air. Faced with the same challenge today, Snow might use a tablet computer. In mid-January, as the Indian city of Allahabad began ushering in millions of Hindu pilgrims for the religious festival Kumbh … Read more…