The Nunavik village of Puvirnituq in Canada’s north has been experiencing a severe water shortage for more than a month. Exasperated by this ‘recurring’ health crisis, which has recently reached an ‘acute stage’, a doctor who has worked in the North for five years is resigning and calling for help.
“I am not leaving in a good mood. I feel extremely guilty. But I could no longer do my best”, Dr Marie-Faye Galarneau said in an interview from Puvirnituq, a community of about 2,100 people, according to the latest census. Over the past week, the doctor has made numerous calls to health authorities to try to help the local government, which she says is “doing its best” to resolve the crisis.
Lack of access to water is a recurring problem in Nunavik1. But this time the crisis is particularly acute, according to Dr Galarneau, who says an epidemic of gastroenteritis is affecting children in the community. Many are arriving at the hospital dehydrated, she says.
Dr Yassen Tcholakov, clinical director of infectious diseases for the Nunavik Regional Health and Social Services Board’s public health unit, confirms that doctors in Puvirnituq have been reporting ‘worrying situations’ in recent weeks, particularly cases of gastroenteritis.
“People who have been in the community for a long time have been alerting us”, Dr Tchokalov says. “Most of the measures to prevent the transmission of gastroenteritis are hygiene measures, which are currently difficult for the community to access.”
“Households do not have water to clean and disinfect living areas. Preventing contamination of all family members in often overcrowded homes is therefore particularly difficult for the community,” Dr Galarneau said.
“Most houses have had no water or sewage for two or three weeks”, she says. “In these conditions, people can’t take a shower. They can’t wash their dishes. They can’t use the toilets. On Monday, the village school had to close for lack of water.”
Last week, bottled water was distributed to staff at the Puvirnituq Hospital to wash their hands. Normally, even if there is no water in the houses in the village, there is water in the hospital,’ Dr Galarneau says. “But here, the toilets in the hospital are also overflowing”, she says. The hospital’s laboratory was also closed last week because of unsanitary conditions, she says.
A return to normality planned for the summer
On 14 April, the Kativik Regional Government (KRG) issued its first press release about the “serious water distribution problems” in Puvirnituq. The KRG said that a pipe that supplies water to the village had frozen over for more than five metres. Trucks had to travel several kilometres back and forth to deliver water to each house.
In another press release on Tuesday, the KRG warned that the problem is continuing and getting worse because of ‘recent extreme weather conditions’ that have prevented the pipe from being repaired.
It also blamed a lack of staff and equipment. In the meantime, KRG and municipal public works staff are assisting the municipality in clearing snow from the roads,’ the statement said.
Only three of Puvirnituq’s five water trucks are currently operational. The others need to be repaired, but delivery of the necessary parts has been delayed, the KRG said.
The mayor of Puvirnituq, Lucy Qalingo, said on Facebook on Tuesday that the parts for a temporary repair of the water system arrived in the village on Monday. “And if the weather improves, the temporary work can be done in early June. Normal water service will resume during the summer”, the KRG said.
Dr Galarneau, who has been working in Nunavik for five years, says the water shortage is getting worse. It was with a broken heart that she resigned last Sunday, she confides. “I can leave. The people here can’t”, she says. “I don’t know what it’s going to take to alert someone and make something happen.”
