Nunavik records first lab-confirmed swine flu case
Health researchers discuss links between RSV and swine flu

Don’t smoke inside your home or even in your furnace room if you want to protect your household against a virus like swine flu, says Dr. Thomas Kovesi, a lung specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Canada could protect all Inuit children against the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, as a way of preventing or limiting the spread of viruses like swine flu, suggests Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatrician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, shown here at the International Congress of Circumpolar Health in Yellowknife. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)
YELLOWKNIFE — Nunavik recorded its first lab-confirmed case of swine flu July 10 , Dr. Serge Déry, Nunavik’s director of public health said this week.
Déry is in Yellowknife attending the International Congress of Circumpolar Health. He said the affected patient is a nine-year-old who is not gravely ill.
The news that the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, has reached Nunavik did not appear to surprise Déry.
Given that the virus had already spread to South Baffin, Sanikiluaq and the James Bay Cree communities south of Nunavik, it was just a matter of time until Nunavik recorded its first case of swine flu, he said.
To curb the further spread of swine flu and the common strain of flu, Quebec and other jurisdictions in Canada are planning a large-scale flu vaccination early this fall.
A second immunization program against swine flu will likely soon follow after a vaccine against the H1N1 strain is developed.
The apparent vulnerability of Inuit in Nunavut and Nunavik to swine flu is also no surprise to other medical researchers attending the circumpolar health conference in Yellowknife.
The high rates of respiratory syncytial virus in Nunavut suggest Nunavummiut are also likely to be more at risk of swine flu infections, said Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatrician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto,
Like RSV, which every year sends many Nunavut children to hospital in the South, the rate of documented swine flu cases has been at least 20 times higher in Nunavut than in the rest of Canada.
The same risk factors — smoking, overcrowding, prematurity, lack of breastfeeding— may contribute to the spread of swine flu.
A lack of immunity, poor access to hospitals or environmental factors may also come into play, said Banerji, who is monitoring RSV and other respiratory illnesses at 10 sites in Canada and several in Greenland.
To decrease the risk of swine flu infection, Banerji advises people to stop smoking, particularly if they’re pregnant. She said smoking during pregnancy has already been linked to lung infections like RSV as well as to other health problems in babies.
Right now, costly injections of the immunization agent palivizumab, which can prevent RSV, are only given to premature babies or to those with heart ailments.
But the Canadian Pediatric Association should expand its recommendations to include all Inuit infants, Banjerji suggests.
That’s because the $7,000 cost of series of injections amounts to far less than the cost of hospitalizations and medevacs, which run into the tens of thousands of dollars for children requiring specialized medical care in southern hospitals, she said.
Even Quebec doesn’t routinely offer this preventive RSV treatment to Nunavik infants due to its cost and because Canada won’t pay for it until the Canadian Pediatric Association comes out in favour of more preventive action.
But researchers know that infants who fall ill with RSV and possibly suffer permanent lung damage, will be more susceptible to picking up respiratory viruses like swine flu.
To prevent irritating your lungs, or those of children, don’t smoke inside, even in the furnace room, Dr. Thomas Kovesi, a lung specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, told Nunatsiaq News.
Kovesi’s research work has established a link between poor ventilation and higher rates of lung infections among children in some Nunavut households.
What can’t be helped in the battle against the spread of respiratory viruses like swine flu among Inuit is the possible connections between a warmer climate in the Arctic, changing lifestyles, and allergies, which open the way for lung irritations and infections.
Allergies in Greenland have risen by 200 per cent since 1987, “the highest increase in the world,” Dr. Anders Koch, a researcher from Denmark, told a session on infectious diseases at the circumpolar health conference.
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