RCI | English : Reports

A Canadian entrepreneur who claims he has been framed in a multimillion fraud case in Dubai asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Wednesday to personally intervene on his behalf with the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates.

“It’s very important for Mr Trudeau to maybe put some pressure on the ruling family of the U.A.E., and specifically in Dubai,” André Gauthier said in a short cellphone video shot in what appears to be some kind of a detention facility on the border between Oman and the U.A.E. and shared with Radio Canada International.

Gauthier also called on the federal government to collaborate with his lawyers to raise the issue of his detention at the United Nations.

Video message from detention faciltiy

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The 65-year-old expert in precious metals trading was arrested in Oman three months ago at the request of the U.A.E. authorities as he tried to return to Canada.

His family and lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to prevent his extradition back to the U.A.E. Gauthier warned that this could be his last video communication after he is handed over to the U.A.E. authorities shortly.

Gauthier is being sought by U.A.E. authorities after he reportedly exposed a $30-million US misappropriation case at Gold AE, a gold trading brokerage company he was hired to grow in 2013.

Gauthier said accusations against him are completely unfounded and an expert report presented in a Dubai court in 2017 completely exonerated him of any wrongdoing.

An interview in handcuffs

On Tuesday, Gauthier briefly spoke to Alain Gravel, the host of Radio-Canada's flagship morning radio show Gravel, from a jail cell in Oman, on the way to being handed over to the U.A.E. authorities.

Family of Quebec man accused of fraud in Dubai makes last-ditch plea for Trudeau’s help

Gauthier said the U.A.E. authorities are accusing him of misappropriation of about $30 million US from Gold AE, even though he wasn't even in the country yet when the funds were diverted.

Gauthier said that, in fact, he was the person who alerted the company's board of directors that funds from one of its branches were being diverted and he was tasked by the chairman of the board of the company, a member of the royal family, to find out what was going on.

Following a five-month investigation of the fraud in 2015, Gauthier said, they filed civil and criminal complaints against the people who had misappropriated the funds and fled the country, but to this day nothing has been done to bring them to justice.

“The people that did commit the fraud are way out in Canada, enjoying life and probably using the funds that they took from the start,” Gauthier said Wednesday.

U.A.E. officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Polar deserts in Canada’s High Arctic are undergoing rapid changes as increases in summer air temperatures lead to permafrost thaw, leaving giant horseshoe-shaped pockmarks on the barren terrain, according to a new study.

The study by McGill University researchers, published recently in Environmental Research Letters, presents close to 30 years of aerial surveys and extensive ground mapping of the Eureka Sound Lowlands area of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands, Canada’s northernmost Arctic islands, located at approximately 80 °N.

The research focuses on these horseshoe-shaped landforms, also known as thaw slumps, that develop when the ice within the permafrost melts and the land slips down.

Permafrost thawing faster than previously thought: study

Permafrost thaw: more CO2 than previously thought?

While thaw slumps are very common in the lower Arctic latitudes, researchers had assumed the High Canadian Arctic, where average annual ground and air temperatures are -16.5 C and -19.7 C, respectively and the permafrost is over 500 metres deep, would be more immune to the effects of warmer temperatures, said Melissa Ward Jones, the study’s lead author and a PhD candidate in McGill’s Department of Geography.

“For a long time we thought that areas that permafrost areas that are closer to the thawing point… further south were the most sensitive to change because they were closer to that zero degree thawing point,” Ward Jones said in a telephone interview from Fairbanks, Alaska.

“But what my study is showing is that, no, these places aren’t immune to climate change.”

(click to listen to the interview with Melissa Ward Jones)

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Scientists had not expected to see the spread of these landforms, known as retrogressive thaw slumps, in the high Arctic because of the extremely cold ground and air temperatures. (Melissa Ward Jones/McGill University)

Even a slight increase in summer temperatures is enough to trigger a bigger permafrost thaw, she said.

Despite short Arctic summers, the thaw season, which lasts for just 3-6 weeks a year, leads to the development and expansion of slumps, which could have major implications for northern infrastructure, Ward Jones said.

“I think it’s a wakeup call that change is happening in these areas that are really far north,” Ward Jones said.

There has been a widespread development of retrogressive thaw slumps in high Arctic polar deserts over a short period, particularly during the unusually warm summers of 2011, 2012 and 2015, the research shows.

“When we see these widespread increases, these large jumps in numbers going from 100 active slumps to over 200 active slumps, that means something is going on bigger regional scale, so we’re linking this with increases in summer temperatures,” Ward Jones said.

McGill researchers have been studying the high Arctic polar deserts for close to 30 years, mapping the landscape within the Eureka Sound Lowlands, Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Islands. (Melissa Ward Jones/McGill University)

This happens because the terrain in Canada’s Arctic polar deserts has very little vegetation and organic cover to insulate it from increased summer temperatures, Ward Jones said.

“Where we are on Ellesmere Island permafrost is more in equilibrium with climate, so any increase in summer temperatures if you reach a new maximum summer temperatures, you’re going to have an increase in your thaw depth – the layer of soil at the surface that goes above zero every summer – and if you have ice-rich permafrost, which we do have in these areas, the ice within the permafrost is going to melt,” she said.

Wayne Pollard, a professor in McGill’s Department of Geography and co-author on the study,

It took the federal government 134 years but on Thursday Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally exonerated a Saskatchewan chief of treason and apologized for the conviction of the Indigenous leader who “made his indelible mark” on Canada’s history.

The exoneration of Chief Poundmaker, also known under his Cree name as Pihtokahanapiwiyin , was announced at the reserve that bears his name -- Poundmaker Cree Nation -- about 200 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

Following prayers and traditional drumming, Trudeau told a crowd that the government must acknowledge wrongs of the past and that Poundmaker was unjustly convicted of treason-felony in 1885.

“We recognize that during his lifetime, Chief Poundmaker was not treated justly nor showed the respect he deserved as a leader of his people,” Trudeau told hundreds of people who had joined the reconciliation ceremony on the windy prairie plain.

“We know that the colonial perspectives which dominated relations between Indigenous peoples and the Crown did not allow for open and collaborative dialogue.”

(listen to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's apology)

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'Make right by the Poundmaker Cree Nation'

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kneels Thursday at the site of Chief Poundmaker's grave. (Bonnie Allen/CBC News)

The federal government has a “duty to take an honest look” at this difficult chapter of Canadian history and “make right by the Poundmaker Cree Nation,” he said.

“It is my sincere hope that by coming together today and taking this important step together as equal partners, we can continue the important work of reconciling the past and renewing our relationship.”

Trudeau to apologize and exonerate an historical Indigenous leader

Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Perry Bellegarde congratulated the federal government for “getting it right.”

“Because this man that we’re honouring he was a diplomat for our people, he was a statesman for our people, he was a chief, a leader and he was a warrior, but he didn’t use a gun to fight he used the pipe and he brought peace,” Bellegarde said.

The exoneration of Chief Poundmaker and the prime minister's apology are an opportunity to address a past injustice and correct the historical record, Bellegarde said.

A diplomat, a statesman and a peacemaker

Chief Poundmaker is credited with saving many lives during the 1885 Northwest Rebellion. (Library and Archives Canada)

In a brief historical discourse, Trudeau reminded the audience of Chief Poundmaker’s achievements and struggles.

According to oral tradition, Chief Poundmaker’s role as an influential leader began in 1873, with the conclusion of peace negotiations between the Cree and the Blackfoot nations.

Known as the “Peacemaker” by the Indigenous peoples of the Northern Plains, Chief Poundmaker had tried to maintain peaceful relations and open dialogue between the Cree and European settlers.

In 1876, Poundmaker was part of the Cree delegation at Fort Carlton where Treaty 6 was concluded with Alexander Morris, Lieutenant-Governor of the Northwest Territories and Treaty Commissioner.

In the years following the signing of Treaty 6, Chief Poundmaker, along with others such as Big Bear or Mistahimaskwa, pushed government officials to live up to the promises and obligations laid out in the Treaty, often with frustrating results, Trudeau said.

But by the winter of 1885, the combination of a depleted bison population, cuts to government aid and fundamental disagreements regarding the implementation of treaty promises resulted in wide-spread dissatisfaction in the Prairies.

“In the push to settle Western Canada,

While much of the world attention has been focused on rapid sea ice reduction in the Arctic, the changes underneath the receding ice in parts of the Arctic Ocean have been no less dramatic, according to a Canadian researcher.

Karen Filbee-Dexter, a research fellow in Marine Biology at Laval University in Quebec City, says while climate change is decimating underwater kelp forests off the coast of western Australia, eastern North America, southern Europe and northern California, the lush forests of large brown seaweeds are thriving in the Arctic.

“The Arctic is one of the most rapidly changing coastal zones in the entire world, it’s warming much faster than the rest of the world, and we’re seeing these really dramatic declines in sea ice,” Filbee-Dexter told Radio Canada International in a phone interview from northern Norway.

“Most of the work in places like Norway, parts of Greenland, as well as some models of what this will look like have suggested that as we get less sea ice and less classic Arctic conditions, that these seaweed forests are actually expanding into our Arctic.”

(click to listen to the full interview with Karen Filbee-Dexter)

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A silver lining

A kelp forest off the coast of the Norwegian Arctic (Karen Filbee-Dexter)

While we tend to think about changes as being negative, having increased algae and increased marine plant presence in the Arctic has a silver lining by making these ecosystems more productive and creating new opportunities, she said.

“Just like forests do on land they, actually, underwater can form these beautiful habitats that are homes for fish and animals, and they grow really fast, they are really quite productive and they’re quite valuable ecosystems,” Filbee-Dexter said.

Kelps are found all throughout cold water coasts but they extend all the way to the Arctic.

They occur on rocky coasts throughout the Arctic “anywhere you get rocks and have sunlight reaching the sea floor,” Filbee-Dexter said.

“They can survive in the coldest water we can find in the Arctic, they can survive in places that get scoured by ice, they can survive underneath the sea ice for most of their life, and grow in a very short burst during a very short window where the ice actually isn’t there and the light can reach the bottom of the ocean,” Filbee-Dexter said.

“They are actually remarkably adapted to live sort of hidden underneath the ice on these very remote Arctic coasts where you don’t have any forests; the whole land is quite barren but then you go under water and suddenly there is underwater marine forest there.”

A double edged sword

However, the rapid warming of the Arctic introduces other variables that can make it more difficult for kelp forests to thrive.

In Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Siberia, permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years are receding by leaps and bounds every year.

Thawing permafrost and crumbling Arctic coasts are dumping sediments into coastal waters at alarming rates, which blocks light and could limit plant growth. The run-off from melting glaciers will also lower salinity and increase turbidity, which impacts young kelp, Filbee-Dexter said.

“Whether you’re going to have expansion of kelp forests is going depend on a combination of what happens on land and what happens in the sea,” she said.

Underwater forests

The longest kelp recorded in the Arctic measured 15 metres and was found in Canada, and the deepest was found at 60-metre depth in Disko Bay, Greenland.

Kelps forests are similar to their terrestrial cousins in the way they create habitat and modify the physical environment by shading light and softening waves.

As the Democratic Republic of Congo grapples with the second largest ever Ebola outbreak, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is appealing to Canada and other donors to step up their contributions to help efforts to stop the deadly virus from spreading within DRC and to neighbouring countries.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) is the lead UN agency helping Congolese authorities in containing Ebola, WFP plays a critical role by providing food to people potentially carrying the virus, and by providing crucial logistical services, including flights to remote areas in the eastern regions of the country, said  WFP Senior Partnership Adviser in DRC Arnhild Spence.

The current outbreak is concentrated in the restive eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, Spence told Radio Canada International in a phone interview from capital Kinshasa.

“The situation on the ground is not good,” Spence said.

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The latest outbreak of Ebola, which was declared last August and is Congo’s tenth since the virus was discovered in 1976, is believed to have killed 872 people and infected nearly 500 more in North Kivu and Ituri, Spence said.

“It is the second one we are grappling with in the course of less than one year,” Spence said.

'Community scepticism and fear'

Medical stuff and an Ebola survivor treat Ebola patient Ibrahim Mupalalo inside the Biosecure Emergency Care Unit (CUBE) at the ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, March 31, 2019. Picture taken March 31, 2019. (Baz Ratner/REUTERS)

The fact that the outbreak happened in eastern DRC complicates the response to the crisis, she added.

“First of all, eastern DRC has been an active conflict zone for several decades with a multitude of armed groups, which makes it difficult to get access to the people who are affected by Ebola,” Spence said.

But international agencies working to contain the virus, which causes the deadly hemorrhagic fever, are also facing a high degree of “community scepticism and fear,” Spence said.

“It is a population who have felt neglected for decades,” Spence said. “So they are critical of what they perceive as the ‘sudden’ international interest in helping to stop Ebola.”

Many people feel that the international community is getting involved in the Ebola crisis out of narrow self-interest, rather than genuine concern for the well-being of the affected population, she added.

“This is one of the key challenges that this response has been faced with because without the active participation and support of the communities that are affected by Ebola you can’t actually bring it under control,” Spence said.

A crisis within a crisis

Health workers dressed in Ebola protective suits carry a coffin with the body of Congolese woman Kahambu Tulirwaho, who died of Ebola, as it is transported for a burial from the Ebola treatment centre in Butembo, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, March 28, 2019. (Baz Ratner /REUTERS)

The last few weeks have also seen a drastic deterioration of security in Ebola hotspots, further complicating the response and threatening the lives of patients as well as medical workers, Spence said.

Last week a Cameroonian epidemiologist deployed by the WHO, Dr. Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, was killed in an attack on Butembo University Hospital, in North Kivu. Two other people were injured in the attack.

Health workers in Butembo threatened on Wednesday to go on strike as early as next week if authorities don’t do more to protect them.

The Ebola epidemic is a health crisis occurring within the broader humanitarian crisis in the DRC, Spence said.

An overwhelming majority of Canadians supports the federal government’s commitment to set aside at least 17 per cent of Canada’s lands and inland waters as protected conservation areas by 2020, according to a new poll.

Almost nine out of 10 Canadians either strongly support or support the government’s 2010 conservation commitment as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity, according to the poll conducted by Abacus Data for the International Boreal Conservation Campaign (IBCC).

“Canadians want to lead on conservation,” said in a statement Cathy Wilkinson, senior advisor to the IBCC.

“Canada is home to the biggest intact forest left on the planet. We have some of cleanest lakes and rivers. We have huge landscapes that help fight climate change. We still have a chance to protect nature on a grand scale.”

Indigenous stewardship

Edéhzhíe is home to headwater lakes, mature spruce forests, and vibrant wetlands; this diversity supports 36 mammal species, 197 bird species and 24 species of fish. (Bill Carpenter/Dehcho First Nations)

The poll, which was released Tuesday, ahead of a major conservation summit in Montreal, also found that over two-thirds of Canadians back a federal program to support Indigenous protected areas and Indigenous Guardians programs to help manage lands.

Canada will host a Nature Champions Summit in Montreal, from Apr. 24 to 25, 2019.

Many Indigenous Nations are working to create new Indigenous Protected Areas across the country, said Valérie Courtois, director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, a partner in the IBCC.

“What we mean by Indigenous-led conservation is when Indigenous Peoples are a part of the design and decision-making on the boundaries and the measures within those boundaries of proposed protected areas and that the push for those areas comes from the Indigenous nations themselves,” said Courtois.

(click to listen to the interview with Valérie Courtois)

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These proposed conservation areas cover over a million square kilometres of protected area, she said.

Ottawa and Dehcho First Nations create Canada’s newest Indigenous protected area

The survey also found that almost all Canadians view land conservation as a way to address climate change.

“Average Canadians are much more conservationist than we give them credit for,” Courtois said. “It’s important if we want to ensure our future as a country, as a Canadian society, that we think about the future of our land.”

David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, said conservation is an issue that unites Canadians.

“It’s rare to see this kind of consensus on issues, but people overwhelmingly agree the country should do more to conserve nature,” Coletto said in a statement.

“They want leaders to work together here at home and internationally. And they want to empower Indigenous communities to manage the lands they know so well.”

Alberta premier-designate Jason Kenney says he’ll move fast to repeal the carbon tax legislation adopted by the previous centre-left New Democratic Party government and jump-start stalled pipeline projects, setting the stage for a confrontation with the federal government, neighbouring British Columbia and Quebec.

Kenney, 50, who will be sworn as premier of the oil-rich Western Canadian province on Apr. 30, after his United Conservative Party secured a landslide victory in Tuesday’s election, said his first order of business would be to kill the carbon tax legislation adopted by Rachel Notley’s NDP government.

At the same time Kenney vowed to revive a bill that was passed by Notley’s government but never enacted, threatening to cut oil and gas shipments to B.C. if the provincial government there continues to resist the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project.

“We are going to act according to the best interests of Alberta,” Kenney said Wednesday, speaking to reporters in Edmonton. “I think the job of the premier of Alberta is to defend our vital economic interests, and for me it means demonstrating to the government of British Columbia and other provincial governments that we mean business.”

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Carrot and stick approach to get the pipelines

A load of pipes originally destined for the Trans Mountain pipeline sits idle on a Kamloops B.C. rail siding. (Dennis Owen/Reuters)

Kenney said he spoke with B.C. Premier John Horgan who called to congratulate him and added that he wants to have one-on-one substantive meeting with his western neighbour.

“I think Premier Horgan knows very well that we are serious about defending our vital economic interests,” Kenney said. “I’ve always said that it’s not our intention to begin with reducing energy shipments to British Columbia but to have the power to do so.”

At the same time, despite disagreements with B.C. over the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline to transport oil from northern Alberta to the Pacific Coast near Vancouver, Kenney said he will continue to seek common ground with the Horgan government on a massive liquefied natural gas project.

In his victory speech on Tuesday, Kenney had also reached out to voters in the French-speaking province of Quebec with a pitch in French for another pipeline expansion project, this one going east towards oil refineries on the Atlantic Coast.

On Wednesday, Quebec Premier François Legault congratulated Kenney on his electoral victory but shot down his idea for more oil pipelines.

“What I am saying is there is no social acceptability for a new oil pipeline in Quebec,” Legault said, while expressing his enthusiastic support for a natural gas pipeline from Alberta to Quebec.

Jason Kenney spoke in French last night to ask for the support of Quebec to build a new oil #pipeline to a Canadian coastline.

François Legault replied in English this morning. Here is what he said about the UCP's big win in Alberta.#ableg #abvote #abvotes pic.twitter.com/GlCAs1APBL

— Geneviève Normand (@GeNormand) April 17, 2019

'Fight for a fair deal'

Alberta’s economy, which depends heavily on the oil and gas industry, has fallen on hard times following the collapse of oil prices in 2008 and then 2014.

Alberta’s economic woes have also been compounded by limited pipeline capacity to pump its crude to world markets, forcing producers to sell their oil at huge discounts.

“Alberta is going to fight for a fair deal in the federation,” Kenney said. “And we don’t think it’s reasonable for other provinces like Quebec to take our equalization money while opposing pipeline projects that will help us pay the bills within the federation.”

Nevertheless,

Alberta woke up to a new centre-right government today after voters in the oil-rich Western Canadian province that has fallen on hard times recently delivered a landslide victory to the United Conservative Party led by Jason Kenney.

Tuesday’s election turned a page on Alberta’s brief experiment with left-of-centre politics as the New Democratic Party led by outgoing premier Rachel Notley suffered a resounding defeat and moved to the opposition benches.

The UCP elected in 63 of 87 seats in the provincial legislature Tuesday night. The NDP held the other 24.

The other two major parties – the Alberta Party (AP), led by Stephen Mandel, and the Alberta Liberal Party (ALP), led by David Khan – failed to elect any MPs to the legislature.

However, the arrival of a new provincial conservative government could have repercussions for federal politics in Canada far beyond Alberta’s borders.

Premier-designate Kenney, 50, a former federal Conservative cabinet minister, who left federal politics to help create the United Conservative Party and bring it to power, vowed to stand up to the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa and “begin to fight back.”

“Today our great province has sent a message to Canada and the world that Alberta is open for business,” said Kenney to cheers. “Help is on the way and hope is on the horizon.”

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Albertans have elected “a government that will be obsessed with getting this province back to work,” Kenney said.

His first step in government would be to repeal the provincial carbon tax introduced by Notley’s government, Kenney has said. The measure would put Alberta on a collision course with Ottawa, which will be forced to introduce a federal carbon levy.

Kenney is also promising to wage war on “foreign funded special interests” who oppose Alberta's oil and gas industry.

“The foreign funded special interests campaigning against Canadian energy have done precisely nothing to stop the doubling of oil production in the United States, or to reduce by one barrel energy coming from OPEC dictatorships, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” Kenney said.

“And in Ottawa, we have a federal government that has made this bad situation worse, killing two major coastal pipelines, including Energy East that would have helped Quebec and Atlantic Canada displace foreign oil imports with Canadian energy!”

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Trudeau released a statement in the immediate aftermath of the election, congratulating Kenney.

"Albertans have chosen to elect a majority government led by the United Conservative Party," it read. "I look forward to working with the provincial government to create good, middle class jobs, build infrastructure, and grow the businesses and industries at the heart of Alberta's prosperity so the province can remain competitive in our changing economy."

"Together, we will address issues of importance to Albertans and all Canadians, including supporting canola producers, and taking decisive action on climate change while getting our natural resources to market."

With files from CBC News

A hardy yeast infection has researchers in Canada and around the world worried about the rise of a new generation of drug resistant superbugs.

There are fewer than 20 documented cases in Canada so far but the fungus known as Candida auris has epidemiologists and public health officials concerned.

“The reason that we’re concerned about it is because these organisms seem to be able to transmit between patients very efficiently within hospitals and because they have intrinsic resistance to the antifungal medication that we would typically use for a patient that has an invasive yeast infection,” said Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease physician and assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

“The rapid spread of this organism is quite alarming but what’s most alarming is the difficulty that we have in eradicating it from hospitals once it has arrived, and in treating patients that are infected.”

(click to listen to the full interview about Candida auris with Dr. Ilan Schwartz)

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In fact, eradicating the fungus from hospitals is so difficult that last year the Brooklyn branch of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York State had to bring in special cleaning equipment and rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.

Candida auris is a yeast fungus that was first described in 2009, when it was isolated from the ear canal of a patient in Japan – hence its name auris, which means ear in Latin, said Schwartz.

“However, the clinical significance of it has since become much more clear and it’s much more fearsome than just something causing ear infections,” said Schwartz, who has been studying the superbug.

Global reach

(Source: CDC)

Over the ensuing decade, Candida auris (C. auris) has spread to 32 countries, including Canada, which reported 19 cases from 2012 to February 2019, according to Health Canada statistics.

There were 6 cases in Central Canada (Quebec and Ontario) between 2012 and 2017, and 13 cases in Western Canada (Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia) between 2014 and February 2019.

C. auris is a relatively new bug and it was traced back to 2006 when scientists with the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) analysed samples of yeast isolates.

“For some reason it really wasn’t around before then,” Schwartz said. “But at the same time scientists at the CDC and elsewhere have analysed the isolates that have been found and determined that they come from at least four different geographic regions and the all seemed to have emerged independently but simultaneously, which is very odd.”

High mortality rate

C. auris usually infects people who are already quite sick, Schwartz said.

“Generally these are patients that are admitted to intensive care units for other reasons, often it’s because of pre-existing problems like cancer or sometimes surgery,” Schwartz said. “These are patients that generally have been in hospital for a long time and end up in the intensive care unit.”

Usually, these patients have already been exposed to a lot of antibiotics and have catheters and intravenous tubes going into their veins, he said.

“Generally these patients do very poorly: the mortality rate is about 30 to 40 per cent for patients for whom the yeast is in the blood stream,” Schwartz said.

The germ is usually contaminated from the skin of patients who become colonized and then transmit it to the environment – the hospital room, various appliances and tools that are used for monitoring and caring for patients, he said.

“Now, there is a process for decontamination of any tools that touch one patient and are going to touch another but because of the particularly hardy nature of Candida auris we have seen ...

A coalition of Canadian humanitarian groups is urging Canadians to show their generousity and donate to a federal matching fund for relief efforts in three southern African countries hit by Tropical Cyclone Idai last month.

Ottawa pledges to match donations made by individual Canadians to Canada’s Humanitarian Coalition and its members between March 15 and April 14, 2019, up to a maximum total of $2 million for relief efforts in flood-hit Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

Melanie Murphy, safety lead with CARE Canada, who has just returned from Zimbabwe after spending two weeks in the southern African country following the devastating cyclone, said the need is immense.

The cyclone hit Zimbabwe’s mountainous Manicaland province around 10 pm local time on March 15 and it lasted for about three hours, she said.

The cyclone caused flooding and deadly landslides, particularly in Chimanimani district, where huge boulders rolled down the mountain slopes and leveled houses and everything in their path, Murphy said.

“This was night time and most of the villagers in this area were asleep,” she said. “They really didn’t have time to react.”

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Many of those who managed to escape their houses were swept away by the torrential flood waters, Murphy said.

“Some of their bodies were found as far away as Mozambique while others are still missing,” Murphy said.

Children carry drinking water over debris created by Cyclone Idai at Peacock Growth Point in Chimanimani, on the border with Mozambique, Zimbabwe March 22, 2019. (Philimon Bulawayo/REUTERS)

Cyclone Idai hit an already highly impoverished part of the country. The Chimanimani and Chipinge districts of Manicaland were the hardest-hit, with at least half of the population there affected by the flooding and landslides.

According to preliminary reports by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 10,000 people are living in improvised camps, in public buildings (schools and government buildings), in transit camps and with host families in several districts.

The government of Zimbabwe reported 299 deaths and more than 300 people are still missing.

In Mutare, the cyclone destroyed 584 houses and damaged 1,263 houses. More than 2,200 houses were damaged in Buhera district.

These numbers are likely to increase as more areas become accessible in the hardest hit districts.

“A week and a half after this, when I was there, there were still people out trying to dig for their missing family members,” Murphy said. “It was one of the most heart-wrenching things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been part of many emergency responses.”

Women wash clothing in the river as they clean up after Cyclone Idai in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe, March 22, 2019. (Philimon Bulawayo/REUTERS)

CARE was one of the first humanitarian groups in Chimanimani and their team began immediately working with community leaders to identify the most vulnerable families and people in need, Murphy said.

“We’ve been distributing life-saving supplies that help with accessing clean water,” she said. “There has been a really extensive damage to the water supply and any time that happens we really worry about diarrheal diseases and cholera, in particular, which has already hit the affected communities in Mozambique.”

So far CARE has reached more than 6,000 people with its emergency response efforts in Zimbabwe, said Darcy Knoll, a spokesperson for CARE Canada.

CARE teams on the ground in Chimanimani and Chipinge provided water purification tablets, jerrycans for clean water and other water, sanitation and hygiene products, Murphy said.

“When I was there,