First Nations leaders in Manitoba have slammed federal health officials, after a report said Health Canada delayed shipping hand sanitizers to reserves because the products contained alcohol.
Grand Chief Sydney Garrioch, who represents Manitoba's northern reserves, said the reason behind the delay is offensive to all First Nations people. He has called on Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq to apologize.
The senior public health advisor for the Assembly of First Nations, Dr. Kim Barker, said valuable time was wasted during the early days of the H1N1 outbreak, as officials debated whether to send alcohol-based hand sanitizers to the communities.
She made the comment Tuesday before a Senate committee looking into how different levels of government have responded to the severe flu outbreaks in Canada's North.
It appears that public health officials, the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch and chiefs discussed the sanitizer issue and whether it would be appropriate to send the disinfectants to communities battling alcohol addiction.
"We heard that people were sitting down spending days discussing the pros and cons of a non-alcohol-based hand sanitizer versus an alcohol-based one because of the concerns around addictions in these communities," Barker told the committee.
She called the debate "absolutely outrageous, quite frankly."
"I quickly pointed out that it's just as easy to get a bottle of Lysol in these communities as anything else. So to think that people are going to be purchasing Purel to become intoxicated, that's quite an outrageous leap to make."
Senate members too wondered why, in communities with no running water and an emerging health crisis, there would be debate about what kind of sanitizers to use.
But Chief David Harper, of the Garden Hill First Nation in Manitoba, said he had such a discussion about alcohol-based sanitizers with his councillors, and they believed they had legitimate concerns. So, they found an alternative product.
"The people who are in charge of health were made aware that there is a product available that is non-alcohol based, and we have purchased some of that," he told Â鶹´«Ã½ Channel.
But last week, health officials brought 2,500 alcohol-based hand sanitizers to Garden Hill, weeks after the outbreak began.
"The problem is that any decisions that are made in Ottawa are often not referred to us, at the reserve level," he said. "We knew there was a concern (about alcohol-based hand sanitizers), and that there was a way to address that concern."
H1N1 influenza has been affecting First Nations people more severely than other populations in Canada, with dozens of serious cases appearing in communities with small populations.
More than a dozen residents of the St. Theresa Point reserve who were hospitalized with flu-like illnesses, including a pregnant woman who lost her child. Dozens more cases cropped up in Nunavut, where native leaders complained they were not being sent enough masks and sanitizers to control infection.
The clusters of infection caught the attention of the World Health Organization, which said it suspected H1N1 can take a harsher toll on people facing poverty, poor housing and poor health services.
Barker told the Senate committee Canada's current pandemic plan is inadequate to address the realities of remote First Nations reserves, where residents are often crowded together in small house for many months of the year.
The AFN is asking for an independent task force to study what happened in St. Theresa Point, Garden Hill First Nation, and other First Nations communities that allowed the outbreaks to spread.
They want a report with suggested improvements to be completed before the flu season returns in the fall.
