Robin Louie of the Ktunaxa Nation Council is concerned that CWD’s arrival in the southern Kootenays poses a risk to Indigenous food security and culture.
Knowledge keeper and hunter Robin Louie is worried.
Worried his people’s food security, traditional knowledge and culture will suffer yet another hit with the dreaded arrival of chronic wasting disease in their territory in the southern Kootenays.
“It’s a serious issue,” said Louie, an executive with the Ktunaxa Nation Council, which includes four First Nations.
The fatal neurological disease has no cure and affects cervids like moose, deer, elk and caribou and is almost impossible to eliminate once it’s established in wild populations.
Caused by abnormal proteins, or prions, that collect in the brain, spine and lymph nodes, the disease in its late stages leaves animals extremely skinny and exhibiting strange behaviour like stumbling, drooling and increased drinking and urination.
The province has tracked the disease’s advance from the west and south of the U.S. border with increasing alarm — particularly after it was found in animal populations within 50 kilometres of the B.C. border with Alberta and Montana in recent years.
The disease has far-reaching social, economic, and conservation impacts — especially for Indigenous populations that rely on hunting for traditional foods, the province’s 2023 CWD response plan states.
U.S. research indicates the disease has caused deer and elk declines in some locations when disease within a population reaches 20 per cent and 13 per cent of the animals, respectively.
Threatened caribou populations are vulnerable to the disease and would likely make their recovery even more difficult, the response plan said.
The three most southern herds of endangered southern caribou in Ktunaxa territory are already extinct as a result of impacts to habitat from human activity.
Moose in the region are also increasingly under pressure from similar threats, like logging, road building, climate change, wildfires and recreational hunters who have drawn moose tags, noted Louie.
“We haven’t hunted a moose in six years because of the low numbers,” said Louie, also a councillor for the Yaqan Nu?kiy (Lower Kootenay Band).
In his youth, he harvested three or four moose a year, Louie said. So, any potential threat to the deer and elk populations the band depends on is a concern, he stressed.
“We’re always worried that the elk and the deer are going to follow suit one day.”
Access to traditional food is essentially food security, Louie said, adding the Yaqan Nu?kiy rely heavily on wild game.
“Usually the community eats about 30 elks and 60 deer a year and we’re a small community with a little over 100 people living on reserve,” he said.
“That’s a substantial amount of food.”
Harvesting game is also foundational to his nation and family’s culture, tradition and identity, said Louie, who takes his children, other youth and non-Indigenous people hunting. He also shares the preparation, rituals and spiritual relationship the Yaqan Nu?kiy have with animals and their land.
“My job now is as a knowledge keeper, passing on what I got from elders and my older family members,” Louie said.
“Our cultural knowledge has everything to do with the animals.”
Youth learn how to skin and process the meat and hides, sinew, bones and antlers for other uses and tools.
Meat is also medicine in the community, he said.
People who are sick will request specific parts of the animal, like fresh hearts, kidneys and livers, depending on their illness.
In honour of a successful hunt, youth are offered a portion of the fresh game as part of a traditional ceremony.
“When we kill our animals, we still hold up the kidney and heart to our kids, say our words and they choose to be a hunter or warrior or both,” Louie said.
“If our traditional practices cannot be passed on, our culture starts disappearing, and it’s already been impacted severely over the years.”
The heavy reliance of Indigenous people on wild game may also mean they face higher potential health risks from eating infected deer, elk, moose and caribou meat.
There is no evidence to date that CWD has made the jump from animals to humans with fatal consequences like mad cow (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) disease did — another type of prion degenerative brain disease — after surfacing in British cattle in the mid-1980s.
Because of the unknown risk to humans, Canadian public health authorities warn that infected animals should not be handled or eaten. Since some animals may not show symptoms, hunters in areas where CWD occurs should get meat tested before anything is used or consumed, federal authorities state.
B.C.’s preliminary defence to CWD is centred on the area where the first confirmed cases were found, working to confirm details and minimize transmission.
On Tuesday, the province ordered that any roadkill of moose, deer, elk and caribou in that immediate radius get mandatory testing. There are also restrictions on the transport or disposal of carcasses.
The disease’s hot zone includes south of Highway 3, south of Cranbook to the U.S. border, west to the Moyie Range and east to the Mcdonald Range.
Submitting deer heads for CWD testing has been mandatory for licensed hunters in high-risk areas along the borders in the southeast Kootenays since 2019. However, harvesters with treaty rights in their territory weren’t necessarily subject to all the same requirements as licensed hunters.
Louie said the next step is to have information sessions and discussions with Ktunaxa members about the arrival of CWD in their territory.
“We’ll look at submitting heads more often,” he said.
But waiting for test results will be a burden.
The community hunts when they require food and can’t necessarily store meat or wait for test results before eating it, he added.
“We really hope the government focuses on developing some sort of rapid test because nobody harvests more elk or deer than us.”
However, Louie is confident in Yaqan Nu?kiy’s ability to track animal populations for outbreaks, gather vital information on transmission and partner with conservation authorities to tackle the problem.
Regular licensed hunters typically only have eyes on animals during the hunting season, but their community is on the land interacting and harvesting animals year-round, he said.
The strong relationship with deer and elk populations means the nation has a solid understanding of their behaviour and range patterns, Louie said.
“We monitor the animals so much that we know where they come from, what their schedule looks like, and the paths they travel,” he said.
“If they are in areas they shouldn’t be or start acting irrational, we’ll have a good heads up.”
Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
