What is tuberculosis still doing here in the 21st century? Although we no longer call it ‘consumption’, TB is not a disease of the past – especially for Indigenous peoples across Canada. Today, the rate of TB infections on First Nations is 40 times higher than that of Canadians living off-reserve. Go further north into Canada’s Arctic, and that rate skyrockets to an infection rate 300 times higher for Inuit Nunangat. In our first episode of One Vision, Many Paths, we look at the reasons for this.
Host Jen Quesnel sits down with Renée Masching, the Director of Research for CAAN, to discuss how social factors like poverty, crowded living conditions and food insecurity make it easy for TB to spread. Drawing from her decades of experience working in the HIV/AIDS movement, Masching shares what we have to learn from traditional ways of knowing and doing when addressing TB in First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. Later on, Trevor Stratton, CAAN’s Indigenous Leadership Policy Manager, shares the four universal steps that are essential to treat and cure tuberculosis.