Pauktuutit produces health booklets

Unilingual Inuit women will have more information on health thanks to Pauktuutit, the Inuit Women’s Association, which has produced three booklets in three Inuktitut dialects, as well as plain English.

Three years ago, the organization gathered pamphlets available in health centres across the Canadian Arctic. Members wanted to find out what information was available specific to women’s health.

They found that there was almost nothing in Inuktitut that informs women how cancer starts, and how to recognize the beginnings of cancer.

“Based on what information is lacking, we’re producing the booklets. And we will be producing more, although we have not decided on the topics yet,” said Veronica Dewar, president of Pauktuutit.

The booklets cover aging, cancer and heart health.

Rita Nashook, an Iqaluit elder who has a medical condition, says the booklets will be helpful. Nashook’s condition requires her to walk with weights on her ankles, even though it hurts to move.

Leonie Qrunnut, who works as an elder resource/ researcher for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.’s social and cultural development department in Igloolik, thinks if the booklets can help prevent medical conditions that they’ll be helpful.

“If it will make people think twice about something, I think it will help. Not knowing what to avoid can make you sick,” she said in a phone interview from Igloolik.

The booklets will be put in mailboxes across the North. Expect your copy soon, it could save your life. The statistics that we hear of so often on having the lowest quality of health care and the highest rates of health problems, these information booklets could reduce those statistics.