As members of the Ontario Infection Control Professionals Action Coalition (OICPAC), we write to highlight a critical gap in Ontario’s healthcare system, the absence of regulation for Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) professionals. Despite playing an essential role in safeguarding patient safety and public health, IPAC professionals are not a recognized or self-regulated health profession in Ontario (or elsewhere in Canada). They lack title protection, entry-to-practice requirements, a regulatory body, and a legislative ...
Background: Rotavirus is a commonly recognized cause of gastrointestinal illness in infants and young children. It is an underappreciated cause of gastroenteritis in adult patients. Clostridioides (formerly Clostridium) difficile is the most important infectious cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea worldwide. A mixed infection outbreak involving rotavirus and Clostridioides difficile has not been fully ...
BACKGROUND: Infection prevention and control (IPAC) practices are both impacted by and contribute to climate change and pollution. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2018) has identified climate change as the greatest global threat of the 21st century. Canada is warming more than twice as fast as the global rate, and the Canadian Arctic almost four times as fast (Rantanen et al., 2022). Extreme weather events from climate change are increasingly impacting the health of Canadians directly, through heat stroke (Adam-Poupart et al., 2014, 2015) and cardiorespiratory issues (Paterson et al., 2012; Levison et al., 2018). Global warming has contributed to the rise in diseases like Lyme disease in Canada, spread by vectors which can now live further north (Ogden et al., 2014; Canadian ...
A recently published measles seroprevalence study of about 350,000 individuals in Ontario underscored the fragility of Canada’s measles elimination status and revealed notable immunity gaps among adolescents, young adults, and immigrant populations (Ariyarajah et al., 2025). The findings corroborate Ontario’s epidemiological reality in 2025, marked by an alarming resurgence of ...
ABSTRACT: A retrospective analysis of healthcare-associated infections was conducted among patients admitted to a 12-bed paediatric intensive care unit in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, from January 2019 to December 2023. No significant changes to healthcare-associated infection rates or length of stay were observed among patients admitted during the pre-pandemic, pandemic, or post-pandemic ...
