GN fights HTLV-1 by screening all pregnant women

Health department shares strategy at conference in Siberia

By JANE GEORGE

The Government of Nunavut is now routinely screening every pregnant woman in Nunavut for HTLV-1.

Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus, Type 1, or HTLV-1, is a retrovirus in the same category as HIV. It is spread through unprotected sex, needle sharing, blood transfusions or from mothers to their babies.

HTLV-1 was first detected in a Nunavut resident with adult T-cell lymphoma-leukemia in June 2005. By October, one person had died from an illness linked to the virus, and up to 20 others had been found to be carrying the virus.

Nunavut’s health department outlines its plans to tackle one of the territory’s major infections, the HTLV-1 virus, in material posted on the web site of the 13th International Congress on Circumpolar Health, thousands of kilometres and a dozen time zones away, to Novosibirsk, Siberia, where doctors and public health workers from around the circumpolar world were meeting this week.

Dr. Isaac Sobol, Nunavut’s chief medical officer of health, was in Novosibirsk to talk about the HTLV-1 virus in Nunavut.

Information on the conference web site describes how Nunavut’s health and social services department has set up a special HTLV-1 task force and says the GN has “an intense educational and counselling program regarding HTLV-1 infection.”

It says health officials are looking at the population of the community in which the first fatal case was found — now known to be Clyde River — by using blood samples to identify the virus in carriers.

In addition to screening pregnant women, the health department is also checking blood for antibodies to HTVL-1, which shows exposure to the virus, in the close relatives of carriers.

The last known cases prior to the recent cluster in Nunavut occurred in 1993, when three people were found to be infected with HTLV-1.

Only four per cent of people who are infected with the virus will ever get sick from it.

Their symptoms may involve a loss of strength in the lower limbs and a loss of bladder control. Eventually, victims may develop cancers of the blood and diseases of the nervous system, and may die.

Doctors from the J.A. Hildes Northern Medical Unit in Winnipeg were also in Novosibirsk to present their study of the Rankin Inlet Birthing Centre, which evaluated whether Rankin Inlet’s midwifery-based maternity program meets accepted Canadian standards of care and safety for mothers and babies.

Their conclusions: “the RIBC has met an acceptable standard of care over the years of its operation.”

The circumpolar health conference draws public health researchers from Denmark and Greenland, who spoke about the development of overweight and obese children in Nuuk, Greenland, and who have been monitoring the trends since 1970.

Their study provides evidence that the “obesity epidemic has reached the young population in Nuuk,” and that obesity follows children from their preschool years into adolescence.

They found there are three times more overweight and obese children now in Nuuk than 30 years ago, and that two out of three of the children who are overweight at age six are also overweight at age 15.

The study also shows the crucial age in a child’s life, for being overweight and staying that way, is age 10.

The 13th International Congress on Circumpolar Health conference, one of the major kick-off events for International Polar Year, took place in the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, one of the largest scientific centres in Russia, with a university and over 30 research institutes.

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