Nunavut’s tuberculosis fight tied to success of homebuilding strategy

Updated March 29 at 5:30 p.m.

The year 2030 is shaping up to be a momentous time for Nunavut — not only does the territory want to have 3,000 new homes built by then to alleviate the housing crisis, that’s also the year the federal government and Inuit organizations want to eradicate tuberculosis.

Achieving that second goal – ridding Nunavut of tuberculosis once and for all – may well depend on how how well the territory does in meeting the first goal, and how many homes can be built by then.

Having too many people living in one poorly ventilated space, which can include homes and shelters, as well as poor nutrition and poverty, are seen as breeding grounds for tuberculosis.

The illness itself usually targets the lungs. It spreads quickly, and while there are antibiotics that can treat it, they’re not always all that effective. The vast majority of TB cases are curable when medications are taken properly.

Canada has one of the lowest rates of active TB in the world and its rates have remained static since the 1980s, according to the federal government.

Problem is, the rates among Indigenous people are about three times higher than for the rest of Canada.

In the most recent data, from 2020, the rate of tuberculosis in Canada was 4.7 cases per 100,000 population, but among Indigenous Peoples it was 12.7 cases, according to the federal government.

Currently there are two tuberculosis outbreaks in Nunavut, in Pond Inlet and Pangnirtung, each with a population of about 1,500.

Pond Inlet’s outbreak was declared in mid-March, when there were five active cases and 22 latent cases, also known as sleeping tuberculosis. Pangnirtung’s has been ongoing since November 2021 and in that time there have been 39 active cases diagnosed and 167 cases of latent TB.

March 24 was World Tuberculosis Day, and in a joint statement Nunavut Health Minister John Main and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Aluki Kotierk reiterated that the government and NTI are working together to eliminate tuberculosis in the territory.

Last year, they signed an information-sharing deal they say will allow them to collaborate better to fight the spread of TB.

In a separate joint statement, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed and federal Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu renewed their commitment to fight TB, noting active cases among Inuit living in Inuit Nunangat were 300 times higher than in Canadian-born, non-Indigenous people between 2015 and 2019.

There are a lot of good reasons to hope those 3,000 new housing units can be built well before 2030 in Nunavut — for one thing, NTI has reported 35 per cent of existing homes don’t have enough bedrooms for their occupants compared to five per cent nationally.

That sort of overcrowding is a big factor in the spread of tuberculosis. So the Nunavut 3000 Strategy is more than just a housing program — it’s a health plan, too, that may well help Nunavut finally eradicate an illness that was tamed years ago by much of the rest of the world.

Note: This article was updated to include more information on tuberculosis and the effectiveness of treatments when taken properly.