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The horrors of doctors and others trying to care for the injured in Gaza under these conditions must stop. We decided to post a news collage cease fire now banner and block on our website and released them on X.com (aka Twitter.com) so others may copy and use on their website or social media. They are also available for download here. There must be a Cease Fire Now.

Opinion

Dr Z. Essak, MD - Vancouver, BC - November 27, 2022.

The BC health care system continues to show larger cracks as it crumbles. Are patients and doctors to believe that the BC NDP Government and the Association of the Doctors of BC have a plan to fix it? You better think again. There is nothing in the Physician Master Agreement (PMA) that is going to fix our health care system. It is not going to restore longitudinal care. It doesn't even pretend to offer a GP for everyone, or even access to timely specialist care or surgery.

While patients are confused as to what will save health care, are doctors blinded by the glitter thrown in their faces? The only hope in sight is if the silent majority of physicians, the seventy percent who don't usually vote, decide this week to cast their vote against the PMA, to Vote "NO" to the PMA, and send a strong message to Government and their own leaders this is not a good fix.

Dr. Zafar Essak, MD - Vancouver, BC - April 5, 2023

Having worked for 40 years as a family physician in BC, when I heard the media announcements recently: that on April 3 vaccine mandates will be lifted on BC public service government workers but not on health care workers until it can become a permanent condition of work in health care, and that we may see only combined vaccines in the fall; it struck me that it’s time we had a real chat. This can’t wait.

Politics is often seen as a glamorous, shiny and sometimes slimy affair. But, seriously, politics is about how we make collective decisions and manage the affairs of our society in our democracy.

There are three things I believe we need to talk about now:

It's never a good moment when you realize you deleted a file you need and it's not in the trash. It's been totally deleted. This happened to me this morning after I had just finished writing a creative document. I saved the file and just left it in a working folder while I did some email and electronic housekeeping. A while later it was still there with some junk files which I deleted and then looked and saw I had also accidentally deleted the document file. I had not even sent it to the trash from where it would have been simple to restore. The stress and grief I went through on loosing a file was not pleasant but I can share with you how I was able to recover the deleted file.