Tuberculosis, Inuit and Getting it Right This Time

In the last couple of days, CBC has run a few stories about tuberculosis, Indigenous people and how the Canadian government has responded to the ongoing problem. And it has been an ongoing medical problem. In 1989, a CBC program reported that it was estimated that in the 1950s at least one third of the Inuit were infected with TB. The same program also suggested that one seventh of all Inuit (1600) were in a sanatorium in southern Canada. More recently, in at least one community on Baffin Island, it has been reported that 10% of residents are infected with TB.

The only cure for TB before the discovery of antibiotics was isolation from the community to prevent the disease from spreading, good food and lots of rest. For the Inuit, this meant being taken from their families and shipped to segregated sanatoriums in southern Canada. In these sanatoriums individuals would have been completed separated from their communities, their families - left with no way of contacting their families for at least two years.  The professional staff would not have spoken their language, no one could explain what was happening to them, no one could understand their questions. To make things worse, at least some (most?) of the staff were abusive either in terms of punishing the residents for speaking their own language to each other. Other staff physically or sexually assaulted them.

I have no doubt that even the most benign of the nursing staff were, in their Christian based righteousness absolutely sure that what they were doing was the right thing, that the Inuit people, perhaps especially the children, were fortunate to be able to live and to hopefully get better in the wonderful sanatorium  - supported by a benevolent government. Even the most kind of the individual working there would have been judgemental about the language and the lifestyles of the people under their care. Even the best of them would have been by today's standards, a racist.

The Inuit were taken from their homes, with very little if any explanation, families were left not knowing what was happening to their family member and in some cases never knew that they had died. The fact that it was "for their own good" is exactly the type of colonialist attitude that has tainted our relationship with First Nations people.

 But in spite of acknowledging that the TB epidemic was poorly handled - I am left unclear as to what should have happened. T.B was a major health crisis, one that a century earlier had been leading cause of death in Canada. In 1953 there were 18,977 sanatorium beds in Canada.  On the surface, the pictures of segregated sanatoriums do not look all that different from the ones other Canadians went to. Separating individuals from their families and communities was the "cure" for everyone. A far better alternative would have been to invest the time and energy into either training doctors and nurses from Inuit communities and then building sanatoriums in the north so that people would not geographically have been so far away. Or failing to at least insure that insuring that all of the staff some of the language of the people that they were taking care of.  

But in 1950, Canada had a population of approximately 14 million people (stats). Just under 50% lived in rural areas. The cost to create special facilities in the far north, given the lack of transportation, the lack of materials and the lack of trained staff would have made the cost prohibitive. Waiting six or seven years (at a minimum) to have any trained Inuit staff might have meant the destruction of whole communities. Given  the information available  and the amount of ignorance - it seems to me that the method of treatment was probably the best that could have been done at that time. It is troubling that such facilities continued to exist while other alternatives were not pursued.

Should the government have done far more to insure that there were competent translators available - yes. Should they have done a better job of screening prospective staff - yes. Should the government have insisted that families receive regular updates -yes. Should patients have been returned home as soon as possible - yes. There is a long list of what, we looking back over the last 60 years, should have done better.  We need to acknowledge our collective failures.

On the other hand.....

Next week in Qikiqtarjuag, Nunavut, there will be a mobile clinic to screen and treat the residents for TB. The operative word will be treatment - people will get the medication they need while living in their community. The clinic will remain in place to ensure that the treatment (7- 10 weeks) is effective. The cost for the mobile equipment is $1 million, but the clinic is mobile and can be moved to another community to repeat the process.

Hopefully this time we have got it right.

Dialogue

This past week the leaders of Ontario's and Nova Scotia's Progressive Conservative parties resigned due to allegations of inappropriate behaviours. The federal Minister of sport and persons with disabilities has also resigned for near similar behaviours. For all three of the men, their political careers are over.  In the short term I would guess that no company that has any sort of public profile will hire them. In spite of there being very few if any facts available, it is now the norm that groups, political parties or organizations quite rightly quickly dispose of toxic members/leaders. Certainly in Canada, no ruling political party (or one that wanted to be) could ever hope to withstand the firestorm of criticism if they did not force a resignation.

It was not always this way. In fact, for virtually all of Canada's existence as a political entity, our politicians have been give immense grace to do what they wanted to do. For example, our first Prime Minister -Sit John A. was more than occasionally drunk. Our tenth Prime Minister, Mackenzie King was in regular communications with his deceased mother and other equally as dead relatives. The first Trudeau made an obscene comment in Parliament and got away with it, Mulroney, I expect, hung out at rich people's homes during the holidays and Diefenbaker may have had a relationship with his secretary- the list could go on and on. Historically it has been the policy of the Canadian press to not to focus, to in fact ignore what was happening in the private lives of our politicians. Civil servants while they may at their peril leak details of government plans, would never have discussed what went on behind closed doors.

No one talked about all of the above things partially because it just was not done but also there were no the mechanisms to quickly disseminate the information. The only way of sharing information about anyone or anything was initially the newspapers, later the radio and still later television. All of those types of news media, while they may have been incredibly biased, needed to ensure that their fact were correct. That is no longer true. Individuals who have information can now bi-pass all of the news gatekeepers and go directly to the people.

For example this week an individual who use to work with Mr Hehr (the above mentioned federal minister) while he was in the Alberta legislature, on Twitter discussed his inappropriate comments to her. While I am in no way suggesting that either his comments were anywhere near acceptable or that the individual is not telling the absolute truth - it strikes me that Twitter is a particularly inappropriate platform to make a statement about something that happened a decade ago. It allows no dialogue, no context of the events and because there is no defence against something that is posted on Twitter or any other social media page.

The issues that are being raised are long over-due. I suspect that there are thousands of women who could tell similar stories. I also suspect and hope that there are thousands of men who cringe at what they said or how they acted 20, 30 or 40 years ago. We need to find a platform so that women and men can have these conversations. But somehow we need stop it from being just about those who are rich, famous, powerful or have just got jobs within the public view. Surely the conversation cannot just be about getting famous men fired.

It would seem to me that at least part of what we need to talk about is how men and women are raising their daughters and their sons. The errors of the past can be apologized for, the worst perpetrators can be publically shamed and humiliated - but I need to know that my three grandson will never do or say anything that offends, humiliates or threatens a women and I need to know that my granddaughter will always be both safe and live in a society where she can easily say when she is not.