Ottawa must act to combat TB in Nunavut: editorial

REBECCA LINDELL
Postmedia News

The federal government needs to add measures for combating tuberculosis to its northern strategy if it hopes to curb record-setting levels of infection in Nunavut, according to an editorial appearing Feb. 14 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Paul Hebert, the prominent journal’s editor-in-chief, of tuberculosis levels in the territory. “The Conservatives have opened the door to helping the North, but there’s a very long way to go.”

The editorial, of which Hebert is one of the lead authors, states that while the government’s long-term focus on economic development in the North is positive, it needs to invest in housing, food security and health care to reduce the risk factors for contracting tuberculosis in the short-term.

The airborne lung-afflicting disease, which can be deadly, has been virtually eradicated in most parts of Canada.

However, it continues to plague many aboriginal communities and Canada’s North.

Nunavut recorded at least 100 new cases of the infection in 2010, the biggest outbreak since the region became a territory in 1999. It’s a rate that’s 62 times higher than the rest of the country.

“It’s not acceptable for any Canadian, no matter where they live, or no matter what ethnicity they are, to not have interventions for such a gap in health outcomes,” said Natan Obed, director of social and cultural development at Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., a land-claims agency in the territory.

The editorial suggests the recent outbreak was fuelled by poverty, poor-quality housing and the chronic lack of funding that has also prevented the territorial government from expanding screening programs, which target at-risk groups, to the general population.

Treatment of the disease also has a troubled past in aboriginal communities, as many Inuit patients were sent South for treatment and never returned, the editorial states.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has consistently driven political attention to Canada’s North, focused largely on sovereignty and the economy, but Obed echoed the call for the government to push further.

“If sovereignty is a large issue with the government of Canada, then investments in people who live in the Arctic directly equate to investments in Canadian sovereignty. And we haven’t seen a proportionate link between the military spending and the social spending,” he said.

One recent program may be a turning point, at least in the fight against tuberculosis, Obed said.

In January, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced $800,000 to fund a pilot project aimed at curbing the disease.

Nurses will accompany Inuit volunteers in going door-to-door in Iqaluit, testing people for active and latent TB cases.

The project is dubbed Taima TB, which means “Stop TB” in Inuktitut, and it is scheduled to start in March.

Still, Obed said the government needs to commit to funding the fight over the next 20 years.

“We have to solve this once and for all. We don’t want our children to grow up in an environment of tuberculosis,” said Obed.