Kevin Wilson
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Nov 05/01) - Imagine the unthinkable. An outbreak, occurring naturally or by design, of a highly contagious and deadly disease here in Nunavut.

Nurse Barb Beattie administers a flu vaccine shot. If Nunavut was stricken by an epidemic, local health officials like Beattie would be the first line of defence. - Terry Kruger/NNSL photo

Many patients probably could receive basic care in their community health centres. Baffin Regional Hospital can provide treatment to some, but others might have to be medevaced.

What would happen if a plague struck Iqaluit, or Cambridge Bay, or Panniqtuuq? How would we cope with the stress if dozens, or even hundreds of people fell ill in a single community?

With recent bioterrorist attacks in the United States fresh in everybody's minds and new threats making headlines, Nunavummiut are wrapping their tongues and minds around words used to describe strange or forgotten horrors: anthrax, smallpox, pandemic influenza.

In the post-Sept. 11 universe, officials everywhere are making sure they are prepared for emergencies. Nunavut is no exception.

Even before the recent terrorist attacks on U.S. targets, Canadian and territorial government officials were taking a hard look at emergency preparedness in the territory.

"There are plans in place to deal with these things," says Nunavut's health minister, Ed Picco.

The territory's chief medical officer is regularly briefed on all potential public health risks. In the event (however unlikely) of a bioterrorist attack, Picco says police would become involved. He adds that health centres always carry a supply of antibiotics, such as ciprofloxacin and doxicyclene, to treat anthrax.

Whatever an outbreak's origin, Picco's department works closely with officials at Health Canada to ensure all levels of government work together.

"We have the protocols and agreements in place with other jurisdictions to deal with these situations," says the minister.

History of outbreaks

Like health ministers across the country, Picco must prepare his department for an outbreak of pandemic proportions.

The Oxford Dictionary describes a pandemic as an outbreak of disease "occurring over a whole country or the whole world."

The last major pandemic, involving a strain of Spanish influenza in 1918, killed some 25 million people in a single year, a casualty list twice as long as the world war that ended the same year.

Health specialists believe that a pandemic like Spanish influenza strikes "once every 65 or 70 years, so, we're due for it."

Ann Roberts, the chief medical officer, is inclined to agree, but added that the lessons of 1918 have been absorbed by generations of public health officials.

"Pandemic flu will be no cakewalk," she says.

The good news is the territory has wide experience in quickly administering vaccinations to counter such infections.

Last year, a particularly severe outbreak of the New Caledonia flu flared up in Sanikiluaq.

"It was striking in its sudden onset," says Roberts. Within three days, the a third of the population was infected.

The hamlet's senior administrator, Brian Fleming, says local health officials, with federal and territorial help, responded "very quickly."

Health Canada responded by chartering in a team of doctors, and the hamlet closed all public spaces to limit the spread of contagion.

No one died, and only a few people with chronic obstructive airway disease were medevaced out of the community as a precaution.

"We have emergency measures response down very pat," says Fleming.