The Far North of Quebec is facing a worrying outbreak of tuberculosis, which is putting pressure on an already fragile health system and leading to the cancellation of a major festival.
Since the beginning of the year, 59 cases of tuberculosis have been detected in at least five villages in the region. If the trend continues, 2023 will mark a new recent record for the spread of the disease.
“There are indeed outbreaks of tuberculosis in a few Nunavik communities,” explained Yassen Tcholakov, clinical head of infectious diseases at the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services, in a telephone interview. He refused to identify which ones, at the request of the Inuit authorities.
Fifty-nine patients, “it’s bigger than last year in full,” he said. “During the two and a half years of COVID, a lot of services have been canceled, a lot of services have been postponed. […] We saw fewer cases because we looked for fewer cases. There, we find ourselves seeing the repercussions of all that. »
An outbreak was detected in particular in Salluit, a village of around 1,500 people located in the far north of the province.
Last month, the municipality decided not to hold its Spring Music Festival for fear of spreading tuberculosis. The darling of the community, Elisapie, was to perform there. The event should be resumed this fall.
A third world disease
Tuberculosis is a lung disease that has been virtually eradicated in southern Canada: most of the cases treated there have been infected in developing countries, where it is still very present and kills more than a million people per year.
Among Canada’s Inuit, however, tuberculosis is far from gone.
At the heart of the problem: the glaring housing shortage that persists in the region and which forces residents to squeeze into overcrowded houses. “It promotes the transmission of all kinds of infectious diseases, because people are in closer proximity,” said Mr. Tcholakov.
Access to care is also much more difficult in Nunavik, where the 14 villages are accessible only by plane. Only two of the communities have a hospital. “Things take longer,” explained the doctor. “When we talk about an infectious disease like tuberculosis, when we postpone things, it allows the disease to reproduce. »
Tuberculosis is caught by contact with a patient who is coughing or sneezing – common symptoms. However, it is the only disease with “compulsory treatment” in Quebec: a tuberculosis patient must absolutely submit to medical treatment, under pain of being forced to do so by the courts.
Unlike COVID-19, you need prolonged exposure to someone with TB to get it.