(The following article is from the October 1-15, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Kimball Cariou

The related issues of public health, racism, governmental incompetence and corporate profiteering took a nasty twist in mid-September with the news that northern Manitoba reserves have been sent body bags instead of medical supplies to fight outbreaks of the H1N1 swine flu.

     Residents of half a dozen Aboriginal communities were outraged when about 200 body bags were delivered in response to demands for resources to fight a second wave of the H1N1 flu outbreak. The shipments were seen as a dire prediction of official expectations of the flu's impact on Aboriginal peoples, who were hardest hit by the first outbreak last spring.

     Leaders of the communities returned the bags to a Health Canada office in Winnipeg, calling the deliveries an insult. Each bag contained full post-mortem kits including a chin strap, five tie-straps and three identification tags. The shipments also included hand sanitizers, masks and gloves.  

     Rod Harper, a spokesperson for the band council of the Wasagamack First Nation, 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg, said "What we had asked for stockpiling were Advil, Tylenol, vaccine, not body bags."

     "Is Canada giving up on the first nations?" Garden Hill First Nation Chief David Harper asked in an interview. "We're very offended. It looks like Canada is giving up on us. Or is this the flu preparedness that Canada talks about?" In many First Nations cultures, to prepare for death is to invite death, he said.

     Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq was "disturbed" to hear about the shipments, and ordered an immediate inquiry, but she declined to comment on who sent the body bags.

     Aboriginal communities fear they are unprepared for another wave of the flu. The outbreak last spring affected relatively few Canadians, but sparked a crisis on several Manitoba reserves. At one point, Aboriginals comprised two-thirds of Manitoba flu patients on respirators. The situation made it clear that after many years of underfunding, Canada's health system could easily be overwhelmed by H1N1.

     Health Canada had been reluctant to send hand sanitizer to Manitoba reserves, absurdly claiming that residents would ingest the alcohol-based gel. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has solicited donations for 15,000 flu kits for northern communities, and the Manitoba government has agreed to cover part of the cost. But Aglukkaq claims that nursing stations on reserves are stocked with medical supplies, and that the kits are not necessary.

     Researchers think the new pandemic H1N1 influenza circulated undetected in pigs for at least a decade before it jumped to people, making a mutational shift. First detected in April, H1N1 was declared a pandemic in June. It has spread quickly around the world but in most cases causes only moderate illness. The disease has been worse in low-income, overcrowded communities, such as many reserves in Canada. So far, the version of pandemic H1N1 circulating is not mutating, which could pose far more dangerous consquences, but experts expect it eventually will begin to change.

     As People's Voice reported in our May 16-31 issue, H1N1 may have emerged from a giant pig factory farm run by a U.S. multinational in Veracruz, Mexico. Such factory farms cram thousands of pigs into dirty warehouses where they are sprayed with a cocktail of drugs. These operations and their manure lagoons create perfect conditions to breed dangerous new viruses like swine flu.

     Smithfield Corporation, the largest pig producer in the world, owns the farm which may have been the source of the H1N1 outbreak. The company denies any connection, but the World Health Organization has warned that a new pandemic is inevitable. The European Commission and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization have cautioned that the rapid move from small holdings to industrial pig production is increasing the risk of development and transmission of epidemics.

     Profits are involved in this issue in another way, in terms of the multinational pharmceutical corporations which produce vaccines. Some opponents argue that widespread vaccination will not prevent the virus from spreading, or that the extent of the danger posed by H1N1 is overstated. Public authorities in Canada and other countries are understandably reluctant to gamble that vaccinations are unnecessary, given the potentially deadly impact of a larger outbreak over the coming fall and winter.

     It is true that the debate over how to respond to global pandemics is distorted by the "medical-industrial complex" which puts profits ahead of health care workers and the public. At the same time, Canadians are justifiably angry that underfunding of health care weakens the system's ability to prevent and minimize the effect of epidemics.

     Whoever made the appalling decision to ship body bags to northern Manitoba did Canadians one favour; this racist act has launched a serious debate around a wide range of troubling questions which need solid answers.