Elderly Kangiqsujuaq woman dies of burns

PUVIRNITUQ — A 79-year old woman from Nunavik died early Thursday morning in Quebec City from burns she had received in an accidental explosion two days earlier.

Sarah Ningiuruvik had waited nine hours at an isolated camp before receiving basic medical attention because nurses in the nearby community of Kangiqsujuaq wouldn’t travel out of the village to treat her burns.

Then, because no aircraft was immediately available for a further medical evacuation out of Kangiqsujuaq, the elderly woman arrived at a fully-equipped burn unit only on Wednesday afternoon.

The news of her death affected nearly everyone in Kangiqsujuaq, population 400.

“She was very close to me,” said mayor Charlie Arngak. “She’s my aunt and she was like a mother to us. It’s very sad.”

Her funeral will be held within a few days. Then, Arngak wants to see a solid official response to Ningiuruvik’s death. He isn’t ruling out a call for a coroner’s inquest into the circumstances surrounding her death.

The Kativik Regional Government will also ask the region’s health board to review policies, including the regulations that prevented nurses from traveling to treat Ningiuruvik.

The KRG resolution said that the health board was created in 1995 to deliver more appropriate services to Nunavimmiut.

“But we feel that health and related services are not adapted as they should be to the lifestyles and subsistence activities,” said one regional councillor.

Up to 40 per cent of Nunavik’s population spend time out on the land to hunt and fish during the spring and summer months. Many of them are elders who, similar to Ningiuruvik, would be deprived of health services in an emergency situation.