Meet Dr. Mehdi Aloosh, Windsor and Essex County's new medical officer of health

The Windsor Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) has a new medical officer of health in Dr.MehdiAloosh.

Dr. Aloosh takes the reins fromformer acting Medical Officer of HealthDr. Shanker Nesathurai, who held the position for more than a year. Dr. Aloosh comes to Windsor and WECHU from Hamilton, where he obtained his training in public health as well as preventative and family medicine at McMaster University. He also has a Master's degree in epidemiology from McGill University.

Prior to joining WECHU, he was a physician at Public Health Ontario, a practising family doctor and involved in research and teaching at McMaster University.

Dr. Aloosh joined CBC Windsor's Katerina Georgievato discuss why he chose Windsor and his priorities for public health in the region.

Thanks for being here, Dr. Aloosh. This is a really great opportunity for people to get to know you a little bit better. So tell us why you wanted to take on this role.

When this opportunity arosein Windsor Essex county, I contacted [former medical officer of health]Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Nesathurai, who I knew in the past and I asked their opinion. They gave me very good information in terms of how the organization is working, the culture in the organizationand Windsor-Essex County.

I learned that there are excited workers, very knowledgeable people working in the health unit also I learned about thecollaboration with the university which brings research into public health work. Also knowing about the socioeconomics of the region. There are lots of things happening: the mega hospital, lots of new Canadians will come to the region. So all of those things led to that decision.

We know that COVID-19 has been at the forefront for the lastfew years. For you now in this role moving forward, what is the biggest health issue for you?

As you mentioned COVID-19 has affected all of the individuals, businesses, all of the people and communities.Going forward making sure that COVID is under control. I think there are other priorities: sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in Ontario and Windsor-Essex County, we are seeing things that we were not seeing in the past. We see the opioid crisis and also mental health issues, vaccinations.All of those sorts of things are some examples of my priorities going forward.

During your first board of health meeting, you spoke at length about (human papillomavirus) HPV. Can you talk about why that's so important for you to get that message out there?

HPV can several types of cancer cervical cancer, oral cancer, penile cancer, lots of different cancers. We have a vaccine for that and we can eliminate those cancers and we can protect our kids and our young adults by vaccination in a school year that's free and I think that we should invest in that, we should work together to do that vaccination and protect population.

There are other aspects to this conversation, which is doing safe sexual behaviour, doing screening, pap smear, those sort of things. So these are other discussions that we can have beside a vaccination.

What is the uptake on the vaccine for HPV in our region?

It's around 60 per cent, which is really good for our school age. But the evidence and some of the research shows that if we keep that over 90 per centbesides other activities like screening and treatment we can save 200 lives just for cervical cancer in Ontario and other issues like genital warts.

It's not just cancer, it's lots of things around it and we can prevent that.