Discover Estevan is taking a look back at 2023 with a chat with Saskatchewan's Medical Health Officer, Dr. Hortense Tabien.
Q: What are some things that stand out for you from 2023?
A: For the 2023 year, COVID continues to be a public health issue. However, the good news is the improvement in the vaccine side of things. We started the vaccine – we’ve had a vaccine that has been very useful and effective in reducing serious illness and complications, hospitalizations and death. We’ve also seen improvement in the vaccine. The schedules, you recall at the beginning, was a little bit more complex. We had a monovalent vaccine in the beginning of the vaccination era for COVID, then we went onto a bivalent, which was really good. All of those were dependent on the circulating strain.
Right now, we have one monovalent vaccine, that is the XBB.1.5 COVID vaccine, that is targeting the current circulating strain. It has a different schedule – it's more simplified now. A safe and effective vaccine that is doing what it needs to do, especially useful as I said for serious illnesses and complications, and hospitalizations. In the next year, actually, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), has recommended a 2024 schedule that is really meant to target those groups that are more vulnerable for COVID infection. You would have an additional dose that will be targeting those groups – the senior, the elderly, and people with chronic conditions. This is something that will be coming up next year, so we are working on that.
In terms of communicable disease, again we have influenza. We are seeing increased rates of influenza as well. It’s still an issue especially in the fall, but we have also seen as good news, an encouraging uptake this year with the vaccine coverage, so we are getting back on track – similar so far as what we had last year. I still encourage people who haven’t received their vaccine to go get vaccinated. I often get the question ‘How soon after illness can I get vaccinated?’ from people who have not been vaccinated. Vaccination is recommended for everyone as soon as you feel significantly well - as soon as you’ve recovered from any respiratory illness. If you haven’t been vaccinated, go get vaccinated.
We just had the CRISP (Community Respiratory Illness Surveillance Program) report that just came out today, and we are seeing that we have high levels of respiratory illness in our community. One thing that I wanted to also stress is for us to take off the blinders of COVID, and just look at respiratory illness as a whole. If you can, just go look at the CRISP report – you have a variety of infections circulating now other than COVID. Some people, when they feel sick, they have symptoms, they will just test for COVID, and if it’s negative, they just think that they are not sick. If you have symptoms, you should think about other respiratory illness, and think about who you are going to visit – friends and relatives, especially those who are in that vulnerable category. It’s really good to think about that.
In terms of going to do your vaccination, we have the 4flu.ca website, where you can go and book your appointment and get your COVID vaccine. You do have sometimes some popup clinics that can be arranged if people need to, so it's just getting hold of your public health office to arrange that.
Other than respiratory, you also have enteric infections. Things like the norovirus are all around there. We’ve also seen increases in Group A Strep (iGAS) - it’s also causing pneumonia; we’ve seen it even in young age groups, which is rather unfortunate. That’s something that we’re seeing an increase across Canada, and Saskatchewan is also seeing that. That seems to be a trend across Canada, and we’re really watching closely.
Another important public health issue that I’m really concerned about is sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Especially syphilis – Saskatchewan has the highest rates of STIs in Canada. Moose Jaw is really seeing significant increases – we've seen even women of childbearing age. It’s really of particular concern, because we’ve also had infections in newborns. It is really a concern, and this really stresses the importance of using barrier methods. Syphilis and all STIs – the good news is, they are preventable; they are treatable. Congenital syphilis is not something that we should be seeing. It’s really important that we make use of the resources that we have based on needs – there's counselling, reach out to your healthcare provider if you need any counselling – but we always encourage testing. People may be having – especially syphilis – without knowing. They may be having STIs and not have any symptoms. Routine testing is important. When you visit your doctor, just have them test for every STI, and that will really help prevent the spread.
I talked about the vaccines. One thing that I also wanted to mention is that Health Canada has approved a number of vaccines. One of them is the RSV vaccine, which is available for people 65 and older. This is not publicly funded, so you can have it in your pharmacy. Public Health does carry some purchased vaccines to provide to improve availability to high-risk groups only, like the pneumococcal vaccine. If the public needs vaccination of non-publicly funded vaccines, they can be purchased at the pharmacy.
Another thing that stands out - non-communicable disease. Really our habits – this is health promotion, healthy nutrition. We’re still having higher rates of diabetes, obesity – those are things that we still need to work on as a community, as a system.
We’ve seen extreme weather events throughout the 2023 year. In the summer we had extreme heat events, we had wildfires and poor air quality, which affected health. Those are some of the things that stand out to me. We are in the winter right now, so we need to be mindful of the cold, we need to be mindful of ice that is going to be coming. Be prepared - have our preparedness plan, dress appropriately, plan our trips, keeping in mind we have all these possibilities. We’re going to be travelling over the holidays, so it’s really important to think about the Saskatchewan weather and some of the difficulties that it can have, and for us to be really prepared.
One thing that I am also really encouraged about in Moose Jaw in particular is with breastfeeding initiatives that have been taken up by the community and in collaboration with family physicians and public health and different partners, and moms. We’ve had some studies looking at how to improve the quality of breastfeeding – what are some of the resources that moms would like to see in the community. We’ve had this participation. It’s really encouraging, and I hope that in the next year, we’re going to continue to have that.
Q: Is there anything else that you’re looking forward to going into 2024
A: I’m really looking forward to really building our health system – continuing building and improving our health system. Collaboration with our patients and our family representatives. It is really important to continue to work together to strengthen public health throughout Saskatchewan. I would like to see more attention on upstream investment. Some resources directed towards preventative health, and health promotion programming. I look forward to continued and improved collaboration and communication – not only within the SHA, but with other key partners, and especially with our community partners, our patients, our clients. A lot of this work within the realms of public health, fall on the initiatives under population health assessment, disease and injury prevention, health protection, health promotion. All of this, we’re really collaborating towards better health for our community and our province – that's what I’m looking for.
You can listen to the interview below between Dr. Tabien and Tracey Moody:
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