E. Coli In Native Community Worries PM

[Blackbear]

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FROM: CBC NEWS ONLINE
_http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/10/24/creereserve-051024.html_
(http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/natio...ve-051024.html)
E. Coli In Native Community Worries PM
Last Updated Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:01:58 EDT
_CBC News_ (http://www.cbc.ca/news/credit.html)

Prime Minister Paul Martin suggested Monday that something has to be done
about a Northern Ontario native community suffering from E. coli contamination
in its water supply.
A doctor who visited patients there last week told the Globe and Mail that
the Kashechewan reserve, 400 kilometres north of Timmins, should be relocated.
"Nothing here is worth saving," said Dr. Murray Trussler, chief of staff at
Weeneebayko General Hospital in Moose Factory.
"The homes aren't worth saving. The nursing station is way outdated. We need
a hospital here, not a nursing station. It needs to be run to provincial
standards, not federal standards, which are totally substandard. And we need to
have a proper water-treatment facility ... and the school needs to be
replaced.
The Globe article led to questions from reporters at a Monday news conference
with the prime minister, held to deal with a wide range of issues.
"I don't think there's any doubt that all of us are very concerned with the
situation as we have seen it," Martin said.
"I certainly share the view that this is very worrisome and that we've got to
act."
About 1,700 people live in the community on the shore of James Bay.
Trussler said the high E. coli count in drinking water has forced the
community to increase the level of chlorine in the water to "shock levels." That in
turn is worsening skin diseases such as scabies and impetigo, which plague
the residents.
He told the Globe that he examined children who have had impetigo for more
than a year. The disease is caused by a bacterial infection that can lead to p
ustules and a thick yellow crust on the skin, usually on the face.
Trussler described living conditions on the Cree reserve as atrocious. Part
of the problem is that drainage ditches run into a creek, along with all
manner of garbage, and that the creek is the community's water supply.
The water treatment plant's intake pipe is 135 metres downstream from where
the raw sewage is released. To make matters worse, the tides in James Bay
cause the sewage to wash back and forth in front of the intake pipe.

[Blackbear]

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FROM: THE GLOBE AND MAIL NEWSPAPER

_http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051024.wxaboriginals24/B
NStory/Front_
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../BNStory/Front)

Conditions On Reserve 'Atrocious,' Doctor Says

Sewer water flowing from taps leads to illness and social unrest



By JAMES RUSK
Monday, October 24, 2005 Posted at 5:10 AM EDT
From Monday's Globe and Mail

A doctor who visited the sick on a Northern Ontario reserve last week said
the remote community struggling with E. coli problems should be relocated.
"Nothing here is worth saving," Dr. Murray Trussler said in an interview from
the Kashechewan reserve, where 1,700 people live on the shore of James Bay,
400 kilometres north of Timmins.
"The homes aren't worth saving. The nursing station is way outdated. We need
a hospital here, not a nursing station. It needs to be run to provincial
standards, not federal standards, which are totally substandard. And we need to
have a proper water-treatment facility . . . and the school needs to be
replaced."
Dr. Trussler, chief of staff at Weeneebayko General Hospital in Moose
Factory, the base hospital for 12,000 people on the James Bay coast, is part of a
delegation from the reserve flying to Toronto to meet with Premier Dalton
McGuinty tomorrow to plead for help.

Last week, the plight of the reserve became an issue in Parliament, but all
Ottawa has done so far is to send bottled water and officials to the reserve.

Leo Friday, the reserve's chief, said that the 26,000 litres of bottled water
provided by Ottawa are not enough for the school to reopen and for people
who are ill to be bathed properly.
The chief worries that the reserve's young people may resort to violence if
its problems are not resolved soon.
"I don't know what is going to happen next week if nothing is functioning.
They [the youth] are talking about burning 10 houses every month," Chief Friday
said.
E. coli has been found in the reserve's water supply and the local school was
closed as a result. "I think people are getting upset, especially the y
outh," Chief Friday said. "They were talking last year when the treatment plant
wasn't working, they were going to blow it up." Although threats have been made
in the past, nobody has followed through.
Dr. Trussler, who described living conditions on the reserve as atrocious,
said "we've got drainage ditches in the community draining into the water
supply." He said the ditches drain into a creek and all the refuse that collects
floats downstream and is then sucked into the water-treatment plant.
The problems at the plant, whose intake is located 135 metres downstream from
the release point of the community's raw sewage, are also influenced by the
tides in James Bay.
"What's happening is that all the E. coli is sort of slopping down toward the
water-treatment plant, then we have an incoming tide and it goes back up
river again, and then we get E. coli coming in and more spilling back."
In the current episode, "because the water treatment plant wasn't working
properly for at least a week, we had people with basically sewer water coming
out of their taps," Dr. Trussler said.
Dr. Trussler said that because of the problems of E. coli, the level of
chlorine in the water, which is routinely extremely high, had to be jacked up to
"shock levels."
This has aggravated skin diseases, which are endemic at Kashechewan. "[High
chlorine] just irritates and dries the skin further, so there is more itching
and scratching, which just spreads things like scabies and impetigo."
He said that he had examined children who, for more than a year, have had
impetigo, a bacterial skin disease that can cause the formation of pustules and
a thick yellow crust on skin, commonly on the face.
He also said that he had seen cases of gastroenteritis, probably due to E.
coli, but this cannot be confirmed until testing is completed.
"We ran across a lady who reportedly had hepatitis A. This is a virus. We
don't normally screen for that. When we do a water sample, we look at E. coli
and coliform counts, but we don't look for viruses," Dr. Trussler said.
He said that when he asked about protecting people from hepatitis A, Ontario
offered to provide 100,000 doses of a vaccine against it, but the federal
government turned it down, saying there was no hepatitis A problem in Northern
Canada.
"This is absolute rubbish. There's 100 native communities in Canada currently
under a boil-water advisory. Any time you are under a boil-water advisory,
there's probability you are going to run into hepatitis A sooner or later,"
Dr. Trussler said.