GN sends health reinforcements to deal with TB in Sanikiluaq

Infection with TB bacteria, magnified, shows up in a culture. (FILE PHOTO)

People in Sanikiluaq, with a population of about 800, say they’re worried that their community on the Belcher Islands is facing a new tuberculosis outbreak.

That’s after the recent medical evacuation of a teenager with TB — one of two new active TB cases that the Government of Nunavut says have been confirmed in Sanikiluaq.

If there’s unease, that’s because elders in Sanikiluaq can still recall when TB sent 51 islanders in 1957 to hospital in Moose Factory, where 12 remained until 1961.

In 1969, 15 people more were taken out due to TB infections, including a family of five from a single tent, according to information recorded by the Qikiqtani Truth Commission.

But Sanikiluaq hasn’t had any TB cases for the past 10 years, Dr. Geraldine Osborne, Nunavut’s acting chief medical officer of health.

But the infection can always crop up — which it did recently, and every community in Nunavut remains at risk of TB, she said.

To respond to the new TB cases in Sanikiluaq, the GN is sending another nurse and a public health worker to the community.

They will assist the local nursing staff with TB screening measures and provide people in Sanikiluaq with more information about the prevention and treatment of TB, Osborne said.

So far, she said about 20 people — mainly from the Paatsaali High School — have been screened for TB through skin tests and chest x-rays.

But as for how many of these have tested positive, Osborne said it was “still too early in our investigation” to provide a count.

An effort is now underway to screen more contacts of the two new active cases and students and staff at the school now before they head off for the summer, Osborne said.

Depending on the results, more screening in the community could possibly take place, she said.

To date in Nunavut there have been 20 active cases of TB in about five Nunavut communities, she said, with some of these communities seeing more than two new cases.

This past March, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami called for more action on TB, saying “it is unconscionable that TB rates among Inuit in Canada remain steadily at Third World levels”

TB among Inuit has been increasing at an “alarming pace,” ITK said, with TB now about eight times more prevalent in Nunavut and Nunavik than it was in 1997.

Sanikiluaq is not alone in fighting TB: more than eight cases were recently detected in the Nunavik community of Salluit, where 50 per cent of high school students screened were found to be latent carriers of TB.

The symptoms of TB include:

• a major cough that lasts for more than three weeks;

• fatigue;

• loss of appetite;

• night sweats;

• weight loss; and,

• coughing.

Most people infected with the tuberculosis bacillus, or germ, don’t become ill or even know they are infected, because the germ can lie dormant in a person’s lungs for many years.

But, without treatment, TB can eventually kill by gradually eating away at the lungs or, in rare cases, by spreading to other organs.