From the column: This is a moment worth celebrating. This is also a moment for taking action.
Written By:
Jenna Yeakle, Levi Gregg, Linda Herron, Kathryn Milun, Arryn Clanaugh, Sydney David, Lisa Fitzpatrick, Allen Richardson, Bret Pence, Ellen Anderson, and JT Haines | 11:00 am, May 13, 2021 ×
Pedestrians walk past a section of Duluth’s Lakewalk a day after it was damaged by a storm Oct. 10, 2018. (Steve Kuchera / News Tribune)
Congratulations to the Duluth City Council, which passed a climate-emergency declaration for the city on April 12. Congratulations and appreciation are also due to local community members who recognize the need for climate action and that we have a limited window of opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario of human and environmental damage.
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch)
More, more, more: Health Minister Foley has listened to nurses
More beds, more nurses and more ambulances and paramedics are exactly what is needed to ease the pressure of the current increased demand on the Victorian health system.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch) has welcomed the Andrews Government’s announcement to spend $759 million to improve the flow of patients through emergency departments.
The rising demand on emergency departments has been discussed at fortnightly meetings between Victorian health unions, including the ANMF (Vic Branch), the Australian Medical Association, the Victorian Ambulance Union and Health and Ambulance Service Minister Martin Foley.
Local View: On Earth Day, consider climate emergency s impacts on your life
From the column: Climate change showed up in my life about five or six years ago when I began noticing fewer birds in the skies and trees.
Written By:
Tone Lanzillo | ×
On Monday, April 12, the Duluth City Council passed a climate emergency resolution. It states that city government and the city’s sustainability officer will prepare a climate action plan and present that plan to the council in December.
On the same day, Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative, launched an 11-day campaign called Living Through the Climate Emergency. Representing more than 450 media partners from around the world including the Guardian, CBS News, New Republic, and the Philadelphia Inquirer the campaign featured human-centered stories on how the climate emergency is seen and felt by ordinary people and how the emergency is playing out in people s lives.
By Oliver Lees
A workers union is calling on the federal government to hasten its vaccine roll-out for staff working in hospitals and aged care facilities across the state.
The Victorian branch of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) is “urgently” asking the federal government pass responsibility for vaccinating the sector on to the Victorian government, as the current roll-out “ignores the brutal aged care lessons” of the pandemic.
A survey conducted by ANMF over the Easter long weekend found 86 per cent of their private aged care staff members were yet to receive a vaccination, despite their priority status as most at-risk in category 1a.
“If COVID gets into one of these homes it will spread like wildfire and these residents will die,” he said.
Kate Marshall, assistant state secretary of Health and Community Services Union, estimates 98 per cent of disability workers who were meant to be in Australia’s first wave of vaccinations – group 1a – had not yet got the shot. Some members have been told by GPs they would have to be put on vaccine waiting lists for three or four months to receive their first jab, she said.
In contrast, almost all of the residents in the approximately 200 aged care homes that are run by the Victorian government have received their first dose (some residents in these homes received AstraZeneca while others got Pfizer).