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CENTRAL ALBERTA’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
BREAKING NEWS ONLINE AT WWW.REDDEERADVOCATE.COM
Premiers agree to bulk-buying generic drugs BY THE CANADIAN PRESS HALIFAX — Canada’s premiers and territorial leaders agreed to buy generic drugs together and standardize certain health-care practices as they try to cut soaring costs amid claims they have been left to manage health expenses in the absence of federal leadership. The premiers, meeting at the Council of the Federation in Halifax, released 12 recommendations that include a plan to buy generic drugs in bulk and adopt streamlined treatment methods for some medical conditions. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who co-wrote the report with Premier Robert Ghiz of Prince Edward Island, said they would identify three to five drugs in the fall and that the provinces and territories would begin buying them next spring. “Canadian prices on 64 generic prescription drugs are 90 per cent higher than American prices and that’s the gap we’re going to seek to close,” he told a news conference Thursday. “We’ve got to fix that.” The premiers have agreed to bulk buying of pharmaceuticals before, and the federal government has even said it was interested in joining, but their commitments have floundered in the face of politics and pressure from the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry. The generic industry argues
that bulk buying would drive down profit margins to the point where some drugs would no longer be made in Canada, forcing governments to rely on sole sources, and leading to possible shortages. The Canadian Pharmacists Association praised the recommendations, but also warned that similar efforts by the premiers in 2010 seemed to go nowhere and that the initiative could risk the reliable acquisition of drugs. “We do caution premiers to tread carefully with respect to drug purchasing to ensure that drug supply ... is not negatively impacted,” Jeff Poston, executive director of the group, said in a statement. The premiers also agreed to examine clinical practice guidelines throughout Canada to determine whether certain surgeries may be unnecessary in a bid to save the provinces and territories money. Wall cited the standard of care used to treat foot ulcers related to diabetes, saying if the right standards were adopted it would result in fewer hospitalizations and amputations. In Saskatchewan, Wall said there were 453 hospitalizations due to diabetes and related foot ulcers last year. Of those, there were 118 amputations — 80 per cent of which he said were unnecessary and cost the province up to $4 million.
Please see GENERIC on Page A2
FRIDAY, JULY 27, 2012
Field studies
Photo by RANDY FIEDLER/Advocate staff
Student Joshua Lee learns more about blights affecting barley crops from Kequan Xi, the crop pathologist at the Alberta Crop Research Station in Lacombe Thursday. The station’s annual Field Day drew about 100 participants who learned about research into triticale, barley and the diseases that affect them.
Recycling in Bowden too costly to continue BY CRYSTAL RHYNO ADVOCATE STAFF Recycling is no longer an option for residents in Bowden. The town was forced to shut down its recycling centre on June 30 because of the skyrocketing cost of operating the site. When the site opened several years ago the town paid roughly $8,000 per year. This year the price tag is an estimated $30,000.
Andy Weiss, town chief administrative officer, said the cost was unreasonable for a town of 1,241 residents. He said the misuse of the centre was driving up the cost. The facility is actually several recycling containers on a city site where residents could drive up and drop off their recyclables like cardboard and plastics into the bins. The town paid a recycling company to pick up the materials. “It was turning into a dump as opposed to a recycling centre,” said Weiss. “It was becoming quite an eye-
sore. The volume of recycling material we were getting was exceeding the site’s capacity.” The town was charged for the pickup and the weight of the containers. Because the site was not manned at all times, there were individual and commercial businesses drop offs of garbage and recyclables from inside and outside the municipality. The municipality is investigating other options for recycling in the town including curbside pickup, another recycling site and regional initiatives. Residents in Bowden who want to
recycle must take their recyclables to adjacent municipalities like Red Deer County or Red Deer. The town held an open house before council voted in June to close the recycling site. The weekly garbage limits for residents were increased from a three-bag to a five-bag limit because of the closure. Recently Bowden entered into an agreement with Red Deer to have its municipal waste trucked to the city’s waste management facility. crhyno@reddeeradvocate.com
Students print models of molecules in 3-D BY LAURA TESTER ADVOCATE STAFF Three-dimensional models will end up in science classrooms at Red Deer College thanks to a summer program. The college’s Applied Research and Innovation Department has been working on a project involving three-dimensional printing. Using the Centre for Innovation and Manufacturing 3-D printer, two summer students have been creating biological and chemical models for the science department. Gregory Sawisky, applied research technician, said they believe RDC is the only post-secondary in-
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stitution in Canada that has both the manufacturing capacity of the 3-D printer and the ability to make these models. “Our hope is that students will take a greater interest in the sciences and that the models can be used to illustrate scienPhoto by RANDY FIEDLER/Advocate staff tific principles and ideas,” Sawisky said on Applied research technician Gregory Sawisky, left, and Thursday. Sawisky, along with engineering student engineering student Jonathan Stolz hold models of biological Jonathan Stolz, looked at 3-D digital ren- proteins at Red Deer College Thursday. derings of molecules and see if they could be printed. can be turned into a file that can be produced on a Some of the designs were created from an online 3-D printer. bank of 3-D images while others were designed from the ground up. Software is used so that the designs Please see MODELS on Page A2
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CANADA
ADVOCATE VIEW MAGAZINE
FAMILY MOURNS MURDERED SON
RUNNING START ON OLYMPIC COVERAGE
It’s a word the mother of dismembered Chinese student Jun Lin never thought she’d associate with the man charged with murdering her son in brutal fashion. Sympathy. A5
Olympic gold medalist and one-time world speed champion Donovan Bailey joins Canada’s Olympics broadcast team covering the Summer Games in London.