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H1N1 crisis deepens

Chiefs hope declaration will prompt more action to deal with pandemic

By: Geoff Kirbyson

25/06/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 15

Spreading his hands, Ron Evans, flanked by (from left) chiefs Gilbert Andrews, Sheldon Kent and David Harper, calls on governments to offer more help.

TREVOR.HAGAN@FREEPRESS.MB.CA Enlarge Image

Spreading his hands, Ron Evans, flanked by (from left) chiefs Gilbert Andrews, Sheldon Kent and David Harper, calls on governments to offer more help.

WINNIPEG — The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has declared a state of emergency over the H1N1 flu pandemic, a move it hopes will rattle the cages of the province and the federal government and cause them to spring into action to combat the potentially deadly virus.

AMC Grand Chief Ron Evans said he and his fellow chiefs want to ensure government officials are fully aware of the devastating impact the H1N1 virus is having in their communities throughout the province.

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"The governments need to step up. There is no plan in place. Nobody wants to accept responsibility for First Nations. There is very little combatting the H1N1 pandemic. Our people are sick," Evans said at a press conference at the AMC's downtown headquarters Wednesday.

The AMC's desperate call for action came as the province announced the number of confirmed H1N1 cases in Manitoba jumped by 163, bringing the total to 458. As of Monday, 37 patients with the most severe flu-like symptoms have been put on ventilators in intensive care units.

Evans and 11 other chiefs decried the province's inability to complete even the most simple of tasks on a timely basis -- getting hand sanitizers into the communities that needed them -- describing it as "a political and bureaucratic nightmare."

Part of the problem is that commonly used hand sanitizer products can contain upward of 60 per cent alcohol and there was concern among health officials as well as some First Nations chiefs, that the sanitizers could be misused for intoxication.

Anne-Marie Robinson, assistant deputy minister of Health Canada's First Nations and Inuit health branch, told a Senate committee of discussions between chiefs and public health officials about sending alcohol-based products into communities with addiction problems because there have been "rare" cases where it has been problematic. Robinson would not disclose which reserves had been involved in the discussions and never linked the talks with the "difficulty" she acknowledged was experienced in getting hand sanitizer to some of the chiefs who had asked for it.

David Harper, chief of the Garden Hill First Nation, which is located about 600 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg on Island Lake, said he has heard before of people ingesting hand sanitizer to get intoxicated and that his own band council talked about the alcohol-based products because Garden Hill is a dry reserve where alcohol isn't allowed. He said they quickly identified alternative products and there's no excuse for the delay in getting supplies to Garden Hill when so many people were getting sick.

Harper said he waited for more than two weeks for hand sanitizer and other supplies to arrive, by which point he had already purchased $15,000 worth of merchandise.

A shipment of 2,500 bottles of sanitizer did arrive in Garden Hill last week from the federal government -- they were alcohol-based. Some has been distributed to families and some of the stock is being kept at the school and a police station. Harper said the federal government has shown a willingness to get off its wallet when it comes to other catastrophes in the past. For example, it doled out $425 million in aid after southeast Asia was hit by a tsunami in 2004 and it partnered with the province to bail out Manitoba hog producers, who have been suffering an economic backlash because H1N1 was originally called "swine flu," with another $37.7 million. Harper said aboriginal leaders would welcome Canadian soldiers with open arms if the federal government opts to deploy them to reserves to help fight H1N1.

"If Canadian forces are being sent all over the world to help out, why not in our communities? We need help," he said.

Health Minister Theresa Oswald said the province didn't have a specific response to the AMC's plea because it has effectively been in a state of emergency since April. The province calls it incident command status, instead.

Oswald said she and members of the province's health incident command team have taken a number of measures to deal with the pandemic, including invoking an emergency provision in the collective agreements of doctors and nurses to reassign them where they're needed, postponing elective surgeries to build capacity in the hospital system for intensive care patients and having First Nations leaders participate directly in its pandemic response structure.

Oswald said she spoke to Evans Wednesday afternoon and asked for a list of areas where the province hasn't delivered and he wasn't able to provide any specific shortcomings.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

 

 

 

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 25, 2009 A3

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15 Commentscomment icon

Good question, how did the H1N1 get in to the remote reservations in the first place? When we had the Sars outbreak in Toronto they seemed to track it quite well, but after the fact. The first Canadians who came down with this had been to Mexico it seems to me. Another thing, we keep hearing about how many people have H1N1 and how many new cases there are, but we never hear how many who have been hospitalized, treated and released. Is that not important?

so how did this virus get to remote communities from mexico?

J.S., no, you don't seem to have rear this or any other post I've submitted. Extinction and just/unjust treatment aren't the same thing in my book. Your logic escapes me.

In many previous posts I've acknowledged that FN got the [very]short end of the stick... but the treaties weren't signed by only one party, were they? Have you actually read a treaty? I think it's safe to conclude that you haven't [or are choosing to ignore what's written], because they are very, very one-sided... Seeing the damage done by the treaties, Indian Act, FN being wards of the government, etc., it is beyond belief how anyone can in good conscience wants to perpetuate 'treaty rights.'

So, it sounds like we're on the same page regarding "equality," but the difference seems to be that I don't think "more of the same" will lead to it. In '54 the US Supreme court ruled that "you can't have sepatate but equal". Doesn't the same principle apply here?

Tango: maybe the reason we all use soap and water is that we actually HAVE soap and water. its ezier to pack around a bottle of sanitizer than a pail of water.

So morebs, let's see if we have this right. Since many First Nations people still exist, weren't exterminated, this is proof that there is nothing unjust that has happened. Wow, what a feather in our cap that we haven't exterminated all indigenous people - so they shouldn't complain.

And indigenous people have been treated equally, you know like government honouring legal agreements (treaties), rounding children up and sending them to residential schools or into adoptive homes, or prohibiting under the Indian Act many rights we take for granted, etc.

Or equal in that a community (the 3 First Nations on Island Lake) with a population of 10,000 doesn't have a hospital while other Manitoba communities of 4,000 people do or that the per student funding for on-reserve schools is 2/3 of what off reserve schools get, or that these communities don't have paved roads or adequate water or sewage treatment, or that there is proven discrimination in hiring in society, etc. Yes, equality... who hasn't practiced it and who is receiving the short end of the equality stick?

Just sayin... well said! We have been profiting from this land for over a century.. profiting from the natural resources, arable farm-land (they booted the native people from the steinbach area because the land was rich farmland, and sent them to the interlake area, which is barren), and have given the native population nothing but addictions, minimum (3rd world) living conditions, bad diets, illness... and then we have the nerve to say they just want the limelight and us taxpayers should be very irate about their needing funds to fight this killer-flu. Incredible.

...Very good Quiplash. So the next obvious question [with an open mind] is: Why? Then: what needs done? immediately? for the future forseeable? for the longer term? But before one gets too far into it, reading or rereading a treaty would serve everyone well.

hey colleen, we can take care of ourselves, you have trying to get rid of us for 500 years, and we are still here stronger than ever. It just one of your deseases that we can't put a handle on. you tried to get rid of us this way before, we survived. WE ARE SURVIVORS. Bring It On.

Thank you, Quiplash. Your math is VERY helpful.

Colleen and Tango, native people pay taxes as well! If there was an outbreak in your community I am sure you would want the same treatment for your people.

What if the government decided not to provide your children's school with sanitizer during flu season. I bet you would have allot to say then.

Colleen, I feel that you are very misinformed and you probably need to get to know a few Aboriginal people. You are extremely judgemental, not ALL Aboriginal people are the way you have them pictured in your mind. I feel that you need to be taught how to respect other people an cultures. I recommend going out to a Community Centre and engaging in some Muti- Cultured groups and learning a few things. I fear if you have children they may pick up on your negativity towards other cultures.

I doubt you have been a tax payer for very long. If you have you wouldn’t be acting like such a baby. You would be used to giving your money away. Everyone pays into it, and it goes to good things. Even tax payers have probably supported you at one point.

Okay, so given we do know what percentage of Manitoba's population is aboriginal, plus the facts that half of all H1N1 cases are aboriginal, and two thirds of all ventilator cases are aboriginal (the last two facts courtesy of today's Winnipeg Free Press)...

...we can do some rough calculations of the case rate between Manitoba's aboriginal and non-aboriginal populations (FINALLY)

Manitoba's aboriginal population is 14.0% of 1,213,815 people = 169,934 aboriginals

Which leaves 1,213,815 - 169,934 = 1,043,881 non-aboriginals in Manitoba

Given half of the confirmed H1N1 cases are aboriginal, 517 * 0.5 = 258.5 H1N1 cases in the aboriginal population, and 258.5 cases in the non-aboriginal population

258.5 / 169,934 works out to 151.9 cases per 100,000 for Manitoba's aboriginal population, compared to:

258.5 / 1,043,881 works out to 24.7 cases per 100,000 for Manitoba's NON-aboriginal population.

Manitoba's aboriginal population has an H1N1 case count SIX TIMES HIGHER than Manitoba's non-aboriginal population.

Small wonder that Manitoba First Nations chiefs are calling a state of emergency. Comparatively speaking, they are getting whalloped by H1N1 swine flu.

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