Tuberculosis rates are on the rise in Nunavik communities

An annual music festival was postponed due to a tuberculosis outbreak in northern Quebec, while the Nunavik region struggles with a series of outbreaks in several communities.

Salluit’s festival was supposed to start on June 29, but will now take place in the fall. Salluit resident Ida Saviakjuk said the decision was made to prevent the disease from spreading.

“It will continue when people feel better,” Saviakjuk told CBC in Inuktitut.

Five Nunavik communities are currently experiencing tuberculosis outbreaks. These latest outbreaks are part of a problem that continues to plague many remote northern communities, fueled by overcrowded housing and poverty.

While the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services has not specified which communities in Nunavik are affected, Yassen Tcholakov, the infectious disease unit leader, confirmed the number of outbreaks and said they have now recorded 58 cases in Nunavik since the start of 2023.

Those numbers include active TB, which is contagious, and latent TB, which can develop into active TB.

It confirms health officials’ fears that there would be a resurgence of the disease, after two years of low numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic when screenings for TB were reduced.

“That [resurgence] is what we are seeing now,” Tcholakov said.

Tuberculosis is a curable disease that usually affects the lungs. In affected Nunavik communities, health workers are now screening people and in some cases entire communities.

Tcholakov said they are also trying to publicize it in those communities so that people are aware of the disease.

They are also working to find more space to do screenings outside of community health centers.

“It’s something we’re actively trying to fight against, actively working to eliminate tuberculosis, just like other communities [and] other regions in Inuit Nunangat,” he said.

The fight to eradicate tuberculosis has been an ongoing battle in many Inuit regions, despite a federal strategy still in place to eradicate the disease by 2030.

Nunavik’s health department says nearly half of the region’s homes are overcrowded, a major factor that can cause tuberculosis to spread.

Tcholakov said inadequate housing is one of the challenges they are trying to address.

“It is clear that TB is an infectious disease, but the root causes of TB are some of the inequality challenges faced by our people in Nunavik,” he said.

Those root causes – and the amount of money needed to address them – are widely recognized. In May, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed pointed to health and social factors, such as poverty, malnutrition and HIV, as other factors causing the disease. Mohammed calculated the cost of eradicating it at least $22 billion worldwide.

For Canada, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has called for $131.6 million in government funding to eradicate tuberculosis – four times the amount the federal government has currently pledged.

But issues like overcrowded housing and poverty are not easy to solve — and, Tcholakov noted, neither are other challenges, such as the limited health care offered in small communities.

“Those are problems that are slow to solve,” he said.

Symptoms of active tuberculosis include a cough that lasts more than three weeks, feeling very tired, not feeling hungry, and having a fever or night sweats.