A Manitoba Health Canada official apologized for sending body bags to Manitoba First Nations communities this afternoon, explaining that the over 200 post-mortem kits sent to northern communities were never intended to be part of flu kits.
Jim Wolfe, Manitoba director of Health Canada's Inuit and Aboriginal Health Branch, told reporters in Winnipeg that the body-bag shipment was a “routine restocking” of remote nursing stations to help them prepare for “unknown and unforeseen events, whether it be a plane crash, environmental disaster or pandemic.”
“It is unfortunate that this has been linked exclusively with H1N1,” he said. “Health Canada apologizes. We all regret the alarm caused by the stocking of this particular item.”
Health Canada regularly re-stocks body bags every three or four months, he said. But especially in the case of Wasagamatch First Nation, which received roughly 30 of the bags, the number of bags delivered “was excessive.”
“In this case, we overestimated,” he said. “Our apology is to all First Nations.”
First Nations leaders expressed outrage yesterday when dozens of body bags were delivered to remote northern communities. Already tense after a spring flu season that hit aboriginals in the province disproportionately hard, many chiefs saw the bags as insulting and culturally insensitive.
Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq speaks at a news conference in Ottawa Wednesday, September 16, 2009 to explain how northern native communities were shipped body bags to help the fight against H1N1 flu.
In many First Nations cultures, to prepare for death is to invite death. Late yesterday, several chiefs returned over a dozen of the post-mortem kits to Health Canada in symbolic protest.
The Health Canada apology followed a statement of regret from federal Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq earlier in the day. “What happened is unacceptable. It was insensitive and offensive,” she said, vowing to investigate the issue through an immediate inquiry.
The apology coincided with the Provincial-Territorial Conference of Ministers of Health, where top health officials from every province but Nova Scotia discussed H1N1 preparedness, flu cost-sharing with the federal government and sharing health workers between provinces in the case of a serious outbreak.
“The centre of discussion was around H1N1, that's no surprise, “ said conference chair Theresa Oswald, Manitoba's minister of health. She said the body-bag issue was regrettable, but emphasized the federal government, and not the province, is responsible for delivery of flu supplies to First Nations communities in Manitoba.
The provincial ministers will meet with Ms. Aglukaqq throughout the afternoon. They will be asking her to consider sharing vaccine costs 50/50 between Ottawa and the provinces.
