Diabetes
- This community has 137 clients identified with diabetes - this is 14% of our population.
- The national average for Canada is 2.6%.
The diabetes educator is geared towards prevention of complications for this clientele. She provides grocery store tours, cooking workshops, challenges and one-on-one counseling for diabetes care. She also took 8 diabetic clients to Sudbury for a Live Smart Expo in September. She also does referrals for ophthalmologist referrals with the local doctor’s clinic yearly.
Communicable Diseases
TB screening continues in the community. M’Chigeeng is not in an endemic area for TB (regularly found in a given population) but is at risk with past history of clients with active TB and other band members historically testing positive.
The TB program continues with health care workers and students being tested as per employment and school requirements. Our office has been a resource for community members accessing health care in areas with less experience. In one instance, a doctor’s office was going to initiate prophylactic TB treatment, but through collaboration with our clinic, did not, since the client had tested positive years before and thus was not a candidate for this. The screening was changed to x-rays and information was shared from the Health Canada protocols. All of our results are forwarded to Health Canada as per protocol. There were no new cases of TB or positive mantouxs in the community.
