Health officials aim for total vaccination against swine flu

Tagak Curley, the health minister, speaks during a Sept. 30 news conference announcing the Government of Nunavut’s plans to combat the H1N1 flu virus this fall. The GN aims to vaccinate everyone in the territory and launched a website, www.flunu.ca, with up-to-date information on swine flu. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

Nunavut health officials hope every single person in the territory gets immunized against H1N1 influenza when the vaccine becomes available in mid-November.

“The best way to stop this spread is to get an H1N1 flu shot,” said Tagak Curley, the health minister, during a news conference Wednesday.

Health Canada has said that remote and rural communities, including all of Nunavut, get first crack at the vaccine when it’s available. So the territorial government plans mass immunization clinics to deliver as many doses of the flu shot as possible, said Isaac Sobol, Nunavut’s chief medical officer of health.

“When more people get the flu shot, less people get the flu,” he said, adding the territory will get enough doses of the vaccine for every resident of the territory to get immunized. Last year, just 30 per cent of Nunavummiut got a seasonal flu shot, Sobol said.

The Reuters news agency reported Sept. 30 that GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug company that makes the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix, was to begin shipments of the drug to Europe next week.

The health department considers H1N1 to be this year’s major flu strain and Sobol said the GN won’t decide whether to offer a vaccine for other flu strains until the first wave of swine flu vaccinations is complete. He also said it’s not yet known if there will need to be a
second round of flu shots.

There’s also no plan yet on how the vaccine will roll out across the territory, though Curley said the health department is working with hamlets to update community health plans.

And once again, Curley and Sobol both urged Nunavummiut to observe the basics of flu prevention: frequent hand washing, covering your coughs, and staying home for at least seven days if you believe you’re infected with swine flu.

Sobol also urged Nunavummiut to keep their homes clean and to regularly disinfect items like doorknobs and telephones, and not to share cigarettes, lip balm and drinks.

The health department also announced the launch of www.flunu.ca, which Curley called “an up-to-date source of information about the flu for Nunavummiut.” The site includes information on flu prevention, and information aimed at pregnant women, who are especially vulnerable to H1N1.

One of Nunavut’s two confirmed swine flu deaths was a young pregnant woman from the Kivalliq region, who died July 15.

The health department has stopped counting the number of lab confirmed swine flu cases. Sobol said that’s because health officials had been testing only the worst cases and people with respiratory problems.

“We’d really like to move away from the numbers game,” he said.

But Sobol did let slip one number: he said two Nunavut communities haven’t recorded any lab-confirmed cases of H1N1. But he wouldn’t say which communities those are. And the health department has refused to provide a breakdown of which communities have been hardest hit by the virus, beyond giving the numbers of cases in each region.

Sobol said that’s because the figures could be incomplete or misleading, and at any rate, the public has no interest in those numbers.

“Lab reports are a very poor representation of the spread of this virus,” he said.