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With a staggering 100 people diagnosed with active or latent tuberculosis in Nunavut in 2017, an access to information request has uncovered a possible reason for the disease’s prevalence in the territory: an alarming lack of data.

People in close contact with those infected with the disease, such as family living in the same home, are called “tuberculosis contacts;” they are at higher risk of becoming sick themselves.

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But Nunavut’s Department of Health says it holds no territory-wide records of the number of tuberculosis contacts who have had, who have refused to have, or who have stopped preventative treatment, or who have been lost to followup. This data is critical for managing an outbreak, such as the one in which a 15-year-old girl died last year.

“The database is still under development and as such is not ready to create summary statistics nor would it be appropriate to do so at this time until the database is fully operational,” said Ron Wassink, a spokesperson at the department, in response to the access to information request.