There were more signs Tuesday that poor, remote aboriginal communities are being hit especially hard by swine flu, prompting some aboriginal leaders to accuse the federal government of leaving them with little help.
Another 28 cases were confirmed in Nunavut, more than doubling the amount overnight in the sparsely populated territory, bringing the total to 53. Six people were in hospital, but officials would not reveal details of their condition.
In Manitoba, an 18-month-old boy from the Garden Hill First Nation was hospitalized with swine flu, Chief David Harper said, and there were concerns for the 10 other people who live in the cramped home.
"There's another child who has the same symptoms who comes from the same home, which has three families," Harper said.
"Housing is an issue."
Harper criticized health services on the reserve, saying staff at the nursing station told the boy's parents for several days to simply give him Tylenol and cold baths.
"It's totally unacceptable, the kind of health treatment we've been getting."
Not far from Garden Hill, more than a dozen of the 3,200 residents of the St. Theresa Point reserve have been hospitalized. Across the province, most of the 26 people who are on hospital ventilators due to flu are aboriginal.
Jim Wolfe, the regional director for Health Canada's aboriginal branch in Manitoba, said reserves are receiving adequate health services.
"We take all (health) concerns very seriously and ... investigate them immediately," Wolfe told reporters.
"Our nurses very carefully follow the provincial guidelines and patient care treatment standards."
The way the disease is spreading among Canada's aboriginal community has caught the attention of the World Health Organization, which believes the disease can take a harsher toll on people facing poverty, substandard housing and underlying health problems.
"If we see spread of this virus into populations which are especially vulnerable, it means that we may see more severe disease than we would see in populations which are relatively well off. I think the current reports coming from Canada ... is a good example of this," Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's acting assistant director general for health security and environment, said in Sweden.
The pattern has happened before.
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 devastated many First Nations and Inuit communities. It is widely believed that poor living conditions and underlying health problems caused a higher toll in aboriginal areas.
"We had mass graves as part of the Spanish flu epidemic and we had bodies stacked like cordwood," said Chief Terrance Nelson of the Roseau River First Nation south of Winnipeg.
Overcrowded homes make it hard to stop a disease from spreading, Nelson said, but a lack of full-scale health centres is also a factor.
"If you went up North ... and looked at the health-trailer type of medicine that is being done for the Inuit and Dene, and then go to Alaska, (you'll see) the native Americans have full-blown hospitals," he said.
