The Garden River First Nations community is a model for pandemic preparedness – even in the absence of assistance or leadership from the Harper Conservative government, Liberal MPs said today.
“The people of Garden River should be proud – they have taken a very proactive approach to prepare the community for any further outbreak of H1N1,” said Liberal Health Critic Dr. Carolyn Bennett. “And they did it all despite being completely abandoned by their federal government.”
Dr. Bennett and Liberal MP Dr. Kirsty Duncan visited the community on Friday to get an update on how residents are coping with the influenza virus and how they are preparing for what health officials believe is a looming second outbreak.
The visit precedes a meeting in Calgary tomorrow between the MPs – along with Liberal Aboriginal Affairs Critic Todd Russell and Winnipeg MP Anita Neville – and members of First Nations leadership and Aboriginal health experts to discuss H1N1 impacts and preparedness.
“What’s occurred at Garden River will be a good case study for our meeting,” said Dr. Duncan. “With absolutely no help from their federal government, they’ve issued flu kits to some 500 households that contain information and things like hand sanitizers and thermometers. They’ve also put together their own Pandemic Preparedness Plan that is an impressive living breathing document, which will be updated as the situation changes.
“It is nothing short of scandalous that they’ve had no leadership from Health Canada or Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. We heard from Garden River officials who said the government has not even contacted them to find out what pandemic supplies they need or the numbers of vaccines that they will require this fall.”
This lack of engagement is why Dr. Bennett wrote to Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq last week to express growing concern over the Minister’s silence on the federal government’s preparedness for the spread of the H1N1 flu virus across Canada, but particularly in First Nations communities.
“In our meetings with health officials and with First Nations communities across the country over the course of the past several weeks, the message has been the same: the federal government is invisible on this urgent issue,” said Dr. Bennett. “As the Official Opposition, we have a duty to do what we can to push this government to act – and we will.”
