TB alert sounded in Nunavik community of Salluit

Half the high school students tested in Salluit showed positive results on a TB test, which shows antibodies against the TB bacteria, shown here. They’re now undergoing treatment for latent TB which involves a lengthy treatment with antibiotics. (FILE IMAGE)

KANGIQSUJUAQ — Tuberculosis continues to surface in Salluit with the tally of active cases in the Nunavik community of 1,400 now standing at eight.

But more troublesome is the discovery that 50 per cent of high school students who were tested in Salluit were found to be latent carriers of TB.

They’re now receiving at 10-month course of medication, Elena Labranche, Nunavik’s assistant director of public health, told the meeting of the Kativik Regional Government council in Kangiqsujuaq.

As a result of the outbreak and uncertainty over how many people in Salluit could have either latent or active cases of TB, planned Arctic Winter Games trials in the community have cancelled, she said.

Those trials would have seen youth from many communities boarding with local families in Salluit.

Two other active cases of TB have been detected in Kuujjuaq, she said.

The high TB rates in Nunavik and Nunavut have been linked to overcrowded housing, poor diet, poverty and high rates of smoking.

Since the 2012 outbreak in Kangiqsualujjuaq, which affected 89 people, public health officials, and the Ungava Tulattavik and Inuulitsivik health centres have continued their efforts to ensure a quick diagnosis and appropriate treatment of cases of active TB as well as follow-up for people who have been in contact with those cases.

A May 6 advisory from the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services recommended avoiding visits to houses where gambling occurs or where inhaled drugs are shared (the so-called gathering houses, which public health officials asked people to avoid in 2012).

There people can spend hours in overcrowded and poorly ventilated environments, so that increases the risk of infection, if there’s someone present who has an undiagnosed case of TB, the health board said.

Public health officials say youth often don’t go to the local health clinics when they have some of the symptoms of TB, which can include:

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

• fatigue;

• loss of appetite;

• night sweats;

• weight loss; and,

• expectoration — the bringing up of phlegm from the lungs.

According to the World Health Organization, each person with active TB can infect 10 to 15 people a year, on average.

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.