Glen Abernethy

Frankly, the best way to protect against measles disease is to get immunized. Children 12 months of age and over and adults born after 1970 and onwards should have two doses of the vaccine. Immunization is available in all communities, all community health centres or local public health units. Measles can be dangerous for infants, and I think we really need to be concerned for those who are unvaccinated under 12 months. Pregnant women are also at risk. Those with weakened immune systems are at greater levels of risk. For these higher-risk individuals, a different form of immunization reduces...

There are kind of two different answers here. If the Member is looking for information for himself, we do have protocols that have been established as far as how MLAs engage with departments. I would be happy to set up meetings or appointments between the Member and local staff, like the COO in the Deh Cho. I would also suggest possibly meeting with the territorial manager of [4:42] Health Services here in Yellowknife, who is with the NWT HSSA. It might be valuable for the Member to help educate him. I am happy to arrange those, following our protocols.

If he is asking the question as a citizen...

The last update I had, and I believe it's still current, was on February 24th, and at that time, there was one laboratory confirmed case of measles in the Northwest Territories.

In my previous answer, I actually talked about some of the work that we are doing in this exact area to increase the number of referrals. In addition to that, in this current fiscal year, the one that we are in and is about to end, we did create some new rehab therapy-type positions in the Beaufort-Delta. Those services used to be provided by Yellowknife with the existing teams. That meant that there were about five or so clinical travel days up in the Beaufort-Delta. Those travel days are now going to be reallocated to the southern portion of this territory, which means that the number of...

Absolutely. The Member is absolutely correct. We can do this. It can be available, but if people don't know about it, they are not going to register. We are planning a significant public launch where we will have an opportunity to explain process, get information out. I will certainly be working with MLAs, hoping that they can help share the information with their constituents. We are in the process of developing a comprehensive communications plan to get this information out. I look forward to working with the Members to get that information out.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Residents of the Northwest Territories, they can donate their organs and tissues as long as they are in a hospital with access to transplant services at the time of death. Due to clinical capacity, that doesn't exist in the Northwest Territories, so all organs and tissues that want to be donated by NWT residents has to be done in a different location. Often for us, that is Alberta. We did pass legislation in 2014, which still hasn't gone live yet.

Regardless of that legislation passing, NWT residents still can donate. Usually, it is a long process. It requires an NWT or...

Unless somebody chose to pursue a vaccination afterwards, the answer is yes, you weren't vaccinated prior to 1970, because the vaccine wasn't really there. One of the challenges we had is measles is highly contagious; like, crazy, crazy, super contagious. It spreads very easily. The other challenge is, prior to the vaccine being available, the fatality rate of measles was about one in a thousand individuals who contracted the disease. When you say one in a thousand, it doesn't sound that high, but statistically that is a huge number of individuals dying as a result of measles. Since the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. An individual's health records will identify when they were vaccinated and whether they actually received the two doses of vaccination. We strongly encourage anybody who doesn't know to get in touch with their healthcare system or the public health team, who will be able to verify your current status with respect to immunizations; for any immunizations, not just for the measles vaccine. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have timelines on when we will complete the portions that we are working on at this point, but to roll out on the bigger level, to make sure that people can get passports and other things using their traditional names with the traditional fonts, I can't dictate that timeline. We will have the transliteration guide drafted with our partners and Education, Culture and Employment in 2019; we are thinking mid-year. From there, we will be able to present it to the federal government. That could take some time, to actually bring that to reality and make it reality. In the meantime, we will...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. November 4, 2016, this Legislative Assembly passed Bill 5, which was a bill to amend sections of the Vital Statistics Act that would allow us to use traditional fonts on legal documents such as birth certificates and other vital statistics documents. This is a commitment we made. This is a commitment we intend to and will live up to. Our ultimate goal is to be able to have traditional names on our birth certificates, on our vital statistics documents, using the traditional font, which is truly the only way to recognize a traditional name. At that time, I said it's going...