The Current for Feb. 22, 2021
Today on The Current:
The pandemic has inspired a surge of applications to nursing schools, but there are fears that won't be enough to solve Canada's nursing shortage. Rosemary Barton talks to professor Elizabeth Saewyc, director of the University of British Columbia's nursing program, and Tim Guest, president of the Canadian Nurses Association.
Plus, would you allow yourself to be infected by COVID-19 for science? University of Oxford student Lauren Thomas hopes to do just that as part of the world's first human challenge trial for the virus. We talk to Thomas about her motivation, as well as Dr. Andrew Catchpole, chief scientific officer for hVIVO, one of the partners in the U.K. trial. And we discuss the ethics of the trial with Françoise Baylis, a professor and bioethicist at Dalhousie University, and Dr. Wilbur Chen, an infectious disease specialist with the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Also, the crew of the MT Iba — an oil tanker abandoned by its owners — are set to return home after years stranded aboard. We discuss ship abandonment and helping sailors with Andy Bowerman, regional director for the Middle East and South Asia with The Mission to Seafarers; Peter Lahay, Canadian national co-ordinator with the International Transport Workers Federation; and Ian Ralby, CEO of the I.R. Consilium, a maritime law and security consulting firm.
And at 60 years old, Karen Dan Wilson has graduated from high school. Wilson is a First Nations woman and residential school survivor in Vancouver, and the first graduate of Langara College's Indigenous Upgrading Program, a joint project with the Musqueam Indian Band. She tells us about her journey, and why you're "never too old to learn."