Kinew orders end to using jail to force TB treatment after Manitoba woman’s detention

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This article was published 02/12/2024 (333 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier Wab Kinew ordered an end Monday to using jail to force people to undergo tuberculosis treatment after a Manitoba woman infected with the disease for a third time was detained for a month.

Kinew gave the direction to Dr. Brent Roussin Monday after public health officials ordered the detention of Geraldine Mason, a 36-year-old First Nations woman from God’s Lake First Nation in northern Manitoba, to treat her condition in late October.

According to the health report for the apprehension order filed by a medical health officer, Mason was arrested after missing multiple treatments resulting in her having “remained infectious for much longer than necessary” and infecting several people.

Mason, who has no criminal record, spent a month in jail. She acknowledged she had missed doses but told the Free Press she had never refused to take her medication and was not contagious at the time of her arrest.

“I was being treated like a criminal,” she said Monday.

Kinew said he will apologize to Mason, who was released Nov. 28, if he gets an opportunity to speak to her directly.

He told reporters he contacted senior government officials Monday morning to request “an order ensuring nobody is ever jailed for having tuberculosis again,” after he learned of Mason’s “terrible” situation.

“I haven’t had a chance to speak to him directly, but I understand that Dr. Roussin is going to sign a public health order to that effect today,” Kinew said.

“There’s a public health order that will say that public health officials are not going to seek incarceration as part of a way to treat people who have tuberculosis, or in a situation like this I think, yeah, that’s just not the right way to do it.”

Mason was arrested while in Winnipeg for a dentist appointment with her family. The arrest was made under the Public Health Act, which allows a medical health officer to ask the court to detain anyone who is a threat to public health. The act allows a health officer to order a person be hospitalized, detained or quarantined.

“I was stressed out having to leave them and (not knowing) where I was going, or how long was I going to be there,” Mason said. “Am I going to get out? Am I not going to get out?”

Mason spent a week at the remand centre before being transferred to the Women’s Correctional Institution in Headingley. She described her treatment as dehumanizing — she was strip-searched several times, forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor at the remand centre and, at one point, was handcuffed and shackled to receive an X-ray.

“People probably just saw me as a criminal,” she said.

Before her arrest, an order was filed by a medical officer in July requiring her to “submit to examinations as necessary to treat her tuberculosis, to submit to any testing necessary to follow the treatment of her tuberculosis, and to receive treatment until deemed cured,” according to an application for her release filed by her legal representation.

“I was being treated like a criminal.”–Geraldine Mason

She was required to take her medication in front of a health-care worker in God’s Lake First Nation but said she was not always able to make it there, in part, she said, because the medication caused nausea and she would plan to take the medication later in the day and the nursing station in God’s Lake would, at times, be closed. She said she would take the medication, but it would be recorded as a missed dose because it was not witnessed.

Mason was ordered to spend 90 days in jail but was released earlier after an application from her lawyer to the Court of King’s Bench argued her arrest was unlawful and following a request from a local media outlet to interview her while she was in jail.

Leif Jensen, a lawyer who took on Mason’s case through the University of Manitoba Community Law Centre’s prison law clinic, said he still doesn’t know why she was taken to jail, rather than to a hospital.

She was not segregated from other inmates after her arrest — she had several roommates and even briefly took on a position in the jail’s kitchen — leaving Jensen to wonder why the perceived threat to public health warranted arrest.

“I kept speaking with Geraldine and reading the file and thinking, I must be missing something, because why would someone be essentially placed in jail for three months for not taking medication?” he said.

Jensen’s application for her release noted that community-based alternatives weren’t taken into account.

“It still makes no sense to me. This is someone with no criminal record, she’s never been in a prison before this happened, there’s no allegations of criminal conduct against her, she’s been hospitalized in the past, but she’s never tried to run from a hospital,” he said.

“It makes no sense to me that she would have been put in a prison instead of a hospital if she needed to be placed anywhere.”

Mason has had tuberculosis three times — once in 2005, again approximately six to eight years ago and her third diagnosis was a year ago. In the past year, she has had to come to Winnipeg to receive monthly treatments.

In the affidavit, Mason said she had to isolate due to her tuberculosis over the summer, and while she was warned by a doctor that a court order could be made while she was isolating, she never received an order.

Kinew said he had not yet been given more information about Mason’s circumstances, including why placing her in a hospital was not possible.

“It makes no sense to me that she would have been put in a prison instead of a hospital.”–Lawyer Leif Jensen

When asked if there was any concern the order could be misused by a person knowingly spreading tuberculosis, Kinew said he was “not going to do the hypotheticals.”

Mason said she would accept Kinew’s apology, and wanted to put the experience behind her. Part of the conditions of her release includes being required to meet via FaceTime with a health-care worker every day to witness her taking her medication.

“I’m just going to keep moving forward from this, but I won’t forget about this experience,” she said.

Tuberculosis, or TB, is an infectious bacterial disease spread through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

The disease, which usually affects the lungs, can almost always be cured with proper medical treatment, according to the province. When not treated, however, it is contagious and can be fatal.

In 2023, Manitoba reported 176 new cases of tuberculosis.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca