Tropical parasites have spread to the Arctic.
The intestinal parasite Crytptosporidium was found in Nunavik, Quebec, by a research team from the MUHC research institute.
The infection is normally found in low-income areas of the developing world, and not in North America.
Cryptosoridium spreads from person to person, or from animal to person, by a fecal-oral route.
The parasite infects a person or animal, multiplies, and causes diarrhea, cramps, and vomiting.
If can be transmitted if it gets into water which is untreated and drunk, or into food, or contacts a person's skin and they touch their mouth or nose.
The disease can last several weeks and is very dangerous for children or anyone with a weakened immune system.
The researchers identified outbreaks that occurred between April 2013 and April 2014 at ten different villages in Nunavik.
The study’s senior author, Dr. Cédric Yansouni, associate director of the J.D. MacLean Centre for Tropical Diseases at MUHC, said the discovery is worrisome because Cryptosporidium illness could have long-term implications on the health of children in Nunavik as well as in nearby Nunavut.
“We are being particularly vigilant because it is known in low-income countries that repeated Cryptosporidium infections can cause growth delays and difficulty at school in children,” he said in a statement.
“In the Nunavik outbreak, children under the age of five were the group most affected by the infection.”
Treatment for Cryptosporidium outbreaks is available in Canada only under a special access program.
Cryptosporidium outbreaks are rare in most of Canada. In 2001, more than 7,000 residents of North Battleford, Sask. became sick when Cryptosporidium entered the city's water supply during routine maintenance of a chemical filter.
In 1997, there was an outbreak in Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, which straddles the Ontario-Manitoba boundary. The community has been under a boil-water advisory ever since.
