To switch to a completely different topic tonight: Saskatchewan has a tuberculosis (TB) problem. A 🧵 on how a once deadly, then well controlled, disease is creeping back through the cracks in Saskatchewan’s community health system. 1/ - ThreadSky

thompsonlg.bsky.social • 15 hours ago

To switch to a completely different topic tonight: Saskatchewan has a tuberculosis (TB) problem. A 🧵 on how a once deadly, then well controlled, disease is creeping back through the cracks in Saskatchewan’s community health system. 1/

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thompsonlg.bsky.social•15 hours ago

In 2023 SK had the highest rate of new TB cases per capita of 🇨🇦’s provinces. The rate is climbing, especially rapidly among children. Worse, Saskatchewan’s 12-year-old TB control strategy doesn’t publicly report its outcomes & SK has not reported TB data since 2016. 2/
https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/phac-aspc/documents/services/publications/diseases-conditions/tuberculosis-disease-2023-infographic/tuberculosis-disease-2023-infographic.pdf

thompsonlg.bsky.social•15 hours ago

TB is a bacterial disease once known as “white death”. It’s a difficult-to-cure disease that once killed many each year. It thrives in poor, crowded living conditions. To control it SK set up its first publicly funded health program, TB sanatoriums, in 1929. 3/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_Sanatorium#:~:text=In%201929%20Saskatchewan%20became%20the,Sanatorium%20and%20the%20Saskatoon%20Sanatorium

thompsonlg.bsky.social•15 hours ago

By the late 1940s TB could be cured by long-term drug therapy. The sanitariums -huge TB hospitals-disappeared into history. TB, almost completely, faded out of sight. But today in Saskatchewan, even though we don’t hear about it, TB is back. SK has a growing TB epidemic, largely among children. 4/

thompsonlg.bsky.social•15 hours ago

While the SK govt has stopped reporting TB statistics (more on that below) we do know something about TB now thanks to one jurisdiction in SK that does report excellent, detailed health status stats: the Northern SK Population Health Unit. 5/
https://www.nitha.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Health-Status-Communicable-Disease-2023-Final-June-13-2024.pdf#page16

thompsonlg.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Here is the trend in TB’s new case rate in SK from that report: 6/

thompsonlg.bsky.social•15 hours ago

And here is the age distribution, which shows that the highest new case rate in northern SK (where most cases occur) is among children: 7/

liseabetta.bsky.social•13 hours ago

My sibling was in Fort San for a year.

https://bsky.app/profile/liseabetta.bsky.social/post/3ljgafey6mc2v

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