Nurse finds disease still spurs fear
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Iqaluit (Mar 19/01) - In 1998, the number of tuberculosis cases in Nunavut leaped from nine to 28.
It was then that a tuberculosis (TB) coordinator was hired full-time.
Susan Strader, a registered nurse with more than 30 years' experience, took on the job.
TB has long been a problem around the North, she said.
Although the number of cases tailed off worldwide in the 1980s, lifestyle and socio-economic conditions in the North ensured the disease continued to be a problem in the 1990s, and the government had to act.
"(Her job) came about as a result of an outbreak in Cape Dorset," said Strader.
Many more cases appear there than in other hamlets. Last year of the approximate 25 cases of TB in the territory, 17 of them in Cape Dorset. It's not known why.
Strader said one of the most important parts of her job is to calm the fear tagged to the term TB.
It's something that she encounters during her travels to communities.
Many people were carted off on the C.D. Howe hospital ship in the 1960s and 1970s when a large TB outbreak struck the territory.
"A lot of the elders remember that and they don't want to come forward," Strader explained.
She said one man needed to be taken to Stanton Regional Hospital in Yellowknife for a lengthy treatment and was very scared.
"We told him he had to go and he just said no ... because of the stories of long ago when they would go away for ever and ever," she said.
"When it was all explained to him he was fine."
Strader files the numbers, the cases and the details of every person with TB or a carrier of the virus.
On trips to communities she educates people about the disease and does TB skin tests.
If a reddish bump appears at the injection site within 48 hours, the person likely has the disease that can be successfully treated with antibiotics. Even so, Strader said it can be difficult getting people, especially kids, to show their arms again because they think they are in for another poke.
Residents have warmed up to Strader though.
"Now when I go to Cape Dorset they say 'hi' and ask how I am," she said.
"It makes you feel good to know they don't think you are always a bad person."
