Via: Paul Webster, Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/181/5/E90
Originally posted by CMAJ on: Sept. 01, 2009
Toronto, Ont.
“Longstanding federal strategies and polices have exacerbated the rapid spread of Novel A(H1N1) influenza in remote First Nations communities, public health officials and aboriginal health experts charge.
The federal government is unprepared to adequately manage or even accurately quantify the incidence among Aboriginal people, the experts add.
The pandemic’s extraordinary penetration of remote communities in the Canadian north is a reflection of federal social policies, says Chief Medical Officer of Health for Nunavut Isaac Sobol.
Although as many as 30 federal agencies manage social policies for Aboriginal people, there is still rampant malnutrition and overcrowded housing, Sobol says, noting that up to 18 people share small houses in some Nunavut communities, with people using beds in shifts.
Little wonder infectious diseases such as tuberculosis are nine times more prevalent in Nunavut than the rest of Canada, Sobol adds. “It’s common sense that these conditions provide a breeding ground for the spread of disease. And that helps explain why the transmission of novel H1N1 has been phenomenally efficient….”
Read the entire original post here: http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/181/5/E90
