Use your COVID-19 awareness to help First Nations kids breathe easier, doctor urges – CBC
Respiratory illness up to 16 times more common in First Nations babies, new research finds
Aug 04, 2020
Dr. Tom Kovesi can skip a step these days when he wants to explain how stagnant indoor air is a problem for First Nations children.
“Before COVID, aerosols and droplets weren’t common concepts, now they’re ever more familiar,” said the paediatric respirologist from the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
We’re also thinking a lot more about how crowded spaces spread contagions, so we should be better able to understand how overcrowding in First Nations homes makes kids ill, he said.
Kovesi’s latest research, in partnership with remote First Nations in northern Ontario, shows children there were up to 16 times more likely to suffer from respiratory illness than other Canadian children. Previous studies in Nunavut looked at lung health of Inuit children aged zero to three years old, but Koveski says this is the first research of its kind on First Nations babies.
