Lung health conference urges Nunavut health workers to focus on TB-tobacco link

Infection with TB bacteria, shown magnified here, leads to the development of TB. Smoking can make TB even easier to catch and harder to kick.(FILE PHOTO)

Nurses in Nunavut should start treating tuberculosis and tobacco use together.

That’s the message that 30 nurses from 13 Nunavut communities received during a three-and-a-half day conference held April 15 to April 18 at the Hotel Arctic in Iqaluit.

The conference, organized by the Government of Nunavut’s health department, was to provide training to the nurses to “bring clinical best practices” to the communities they work in, said Taha Tabish, who helped organize the event.

Tabish, who works with the GN’s “tobacco has no place here” campaign, said that the “leadership in lung health” conference brought together TB experts and people working in tobacco reduction for the first time.

The goal: to train nurses to look for TB symptoms as well as signs of tobacco use when they’re seeing TB patients or giving out TB medication.

“You’re not necessarily looking for smoking habits, [when seeing a patient]” Tabish said.

But the nurses learned about different “interviewing” techniques to help them determine whether people with TB are smoking.

The World Health Organization has linked TB and tobacco-related health issues together.

According to the WHO, smoking substantially increases the risk, spread and death from the disease.

More than 20 per cent of TB cases may be attributable to smoking, independent of alcohol use and other socio-economic risk factors.

“Controlling the tobacco epidemic will help control the TB epidemic,” the WHO website said.

Smoking also increases the risk of getting TB by more than two-and-a-half times.

That’s why the WHO recommends “cross training” TB and tobacco control health workers. It also suggest registering TB patient’s tobacco use and offering counselling and treatment for smokers as well promoting and enforcing smoke-free policies and procedures — especially where TB services are offered.

The “Inuit-Specific Tuberculosis Strategy,” which Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami released this past March to coincide with World TB Day, also recommended making sure more Inuit are aware about the links between smoking and TB.

Smoking rates in Nunavut are more than double the national average, with more than 50 per cent of Nunavummiut over the age of 12, and 80 per cent of pregnant women in the Baffin region smoking on a daily basis.

And the TB rates are just as troubling — for Inuit in 2011 the rate was nearly 254 times the rate reported for Canadian-born non-aboriginals, and roughly 38 times the rate reported for Canada overall.

The Government of Nunavut now has a “clinical educator” position in the works to help make treating TB and tobacco use together a standard in the territory, Tabish said.