Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that we can all fairly say that living in poor conditions sometimes creates health problems. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Health. Overcrowding invariably creates health issues related to chronic respiratory conditions. My question to the Minister is: What is the department doing to eliminate tuberculosis rates and rates of other chronic respiratory conditions related to poor living conditions?
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. The honourable Minister responsible for Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department is working on the eradication of tuberculosis. The department works with Aboriginal community governments and our health authorities across the Northwest Territories to make a commitment to eliminate tuberculosis in the Northwest Territories.
I’d like to thank the Minister for that. Is there also an effort to maybe try to describe some of the trans-weather… I know there’s always the possibility of epidemics and I think we recently saw it in southern Canada. Whether the department is looking at, perhaps, trends or just some target areas, we have to be fairly concerned in terms of this new strain of tuberculosis and how it could probably affect the general health.
Yes, the rates of tuberculosis in the Northwest Territories are six times the national average. That’s a fact, but the numbers are still small. There are 26 cases per 100,000 people. This is the number and it’s less than four cases per 100,000 across the country. In cases where there was a bit of an outbreak of tuberculosis, the department has gone into the community; we’ve gone into the community, we’ve done screening. The last time that occurred we screened 95 percent of the community. We found 17 cases of positive tuberculosis and all of those cases have been eradicated.
I’d like to ask the Minister what are some of the preventative steps or preventative strategies that perhaps the Minister and the department would consider in trying to eliminate tuberculosis and other chronic respiratory conditions that are associated with overcrowding.
The situation is that the community health nurses in communities where tuberculosis has come into the community or the community has come into contact with tuberculosis, the health nurses are working with the communities where there is overcrowding that seems to be one of the factors. We work with the local housing organizations to ensure that if there’s overcrowding in public housing, that we try to address that issue. If there’s overcrowding in the homeownership situation, then we work with the Housing Corporation to try to address that issue.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think my final question is just on the lifestyle that we all live. I think it’s fair to say that we have high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, and also at the same time, smoking rates are high. What is the department doing to try to maybe perhaps focus on preventative steps so that our people here in the North are living a more healthy lifestyle?
From about 1995 to 2009, smoking for people over the age of 15 has gone down from about 52 percent to 38 percent, and that’s largely to do with the Don’t Be a Butthead campaign that was launched in the schools and so on.
The department is trying to come up now with an overall strategy of health problem prevention, and how we’re hoping to do that is to talk to our authorities, and the communities, and the professionals in the communities and try to package, along with the Aboriginal government, try to package the programs that are in the community so that we have a greater impact, that good programs are continued and that programs that are not effective can be dropped, and we will focus in on the good programs and hopefully prevent people from getting unhealthy as a result of lifestyle. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
