Nunavik health board tackles rising diabetes rates

KUUJJUAQ – Diabetes afflicts one out of five Cree living in the James Bay communities just south of Nunavik.

The disease is far less common in Nunavik, but by sharing information and encouraging activities to prevent diabetes, the region’s health board is trying to keep the disease from reaching the same epidemic levels in Nunavik as it has in other aboriginal communities.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the body can’t process the sugars in food properly. Depending on its severity, diabetes can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and sometimes even death.

There may be up to 100 diabetics in Nunavik, and, as part of its diabetes prevention program, Nunavik’s regional health board is producing a growing variety of materials on diabetes, in English and Inuttitut, for health workers, people with diabetes and even cooks.

These materials are all being posted at the public health section of the web site www.rrsss17.gouv.qc.ca where residents of the four Inuit regions can consult and download the information as needed.

New research indicates that diabetes is increasing in Canada’s Inuit communities. According to the 1991 aboriginal peoples survey, Inuit had a lower rate of diabetes, only 1.9 per cent, compared with the Canadian population.

However, the First Nations and Inuit Regional Health Survey released in 2003 shows diabetes rates as high as four per cent among Inuit in Labrador, higher than estimates for the overall Canadian population.

The overall official diabetes rate for Inuit 15 and up is now 2.3 per cent. Some studies have concluded the actual rate of diabetes may be two or three times the rate of known diagnosed cases.

An eight-year study of diabetes among Alaskan natives found the greatest increase occurring among the Inupiat, and diabetes is also on the rise in Greenland.

In the remote settlements of Uummannaq, Greenland, 14.5 per cent of the population has diabetes, while in Nuuk, the capital, eight per cent have been diagnosed with this chronic disease.

The most potent risk factors driving the diabetes epidemic, in addition to a genetic predisposition, are alcohol consumption, age, obesity, physical inactivity and hypertension.

Eating fruits and vegetables seems to have a preventive effect, as does exercise and regular consumption of seal meat.

“That’s why we promote country foods with the least animal fat from the South as possible,” said Robert Ladouceur, a nurse with the regional health board, who is responsible for Nunavik’s diabetes program.

In a new cookbook prepared by the health board for diabetics, you’ll find recipes for seal meat and other healthy local foods.

Among the health board’s prevention efforts are two successful diabetes awareness events, which took place earlier this year in Puvirnituq and Inukjuak. These featured a feast of healthy foods and school visits from Jonah Kilabuk of Pangnirtung, who suffers from diabetes and was able to tell to children in Inuktitut about the disease. These events will also be included in a diabetes prevention video being produced by Pauktuutit, the national Inuit women’s association.

Puvirnituq has a diabetes prevention program that offers regular exercise sessions to participants, and Quaqtaq is planning a similar program, which will also incorporate exercises in its heated community swimming pool.

Nunavik has no dialysis unit which could offer this treatment to severe diabetics who often suffer from kidney failure, so diabetes prevention is even more important, according to the health board.

“We have to change the mentality of people. The majority of people in the villages don’t understand regular exercise because it wasn’t part of their traditions before they lived in communities,” Ladouceur said.

But the more people are in communities living a southern lifestyle and eating southern food, the more at risk they are of diabetes, Ladouceur said.