Resilience Recovery and
How a community-led mobilization of local and provincial health services helped La Loche beat back COVID-19
By Girard Hengen | Photo credit Hilary Aadland When the remote northern village of La Loche overcame an outbreak of COVID-19 early in 2020, the massive effort to squelch the virus was lauded as a success. But for physicians looking back more than a year later, that success is hard to define. “It is a success story in terms of how the outbreak was managed, how everything came together and the ultimate outcome – because it could have been worse – but the fact that people still lost their lives was still pretty difficult to deal with,” said Dr. Moliehi Khaketla, Medical Health Officer with the Northern Saskatchewan Population Health Unit based in La Ronge. “The fear and anxiety that people had was understandable, particularly when northern communities including La Loche started losing residents as a result of COVID-19,” she said. “Communities had to adjust to grieving and paying re-
spects to loved ones in a different way – that presented an additional layer of complexity to a very challenging situation.” The first case of COVID-19 in La Loche appeared in early April 2020. A public health investigation determined the infection was linked to travel from northern Alberta. By mid-April, an outbreak of COVID-19 was declared at the local long-term care facility. Subsequent community transmission resulted in more than 250 people being confirmed positive, dozens hospitalized, and several deaths by the end of May 2020. Health resources at local and provincial levels were mobilized to deal with what at the time was the largest outbreak in Saskatchewan and the first in a remote Indigenous community in Canada. This, in combination with travel restrictions and door-to-door testing, ultimately helped disrupt the spread of disease within the communities of La Loche and neighbouring Clearwater River Dene Nation.
SMA DIGEST | FALL 2020
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