Qallunaat

Fortunately, our study also had crucial supports. At a town hall meeting I'd held in Cape Dorset several years earlier, I'd asked the elders whether babies used to get sick in years past, and was told "only when the Qallunaat [south-erners] arrive in their ships." A group of mothers in Igloolik had banded together to help infants avoid the now-annual community outbreaks of respiratory syncytial virus infection by helping ensure our study would succeed. Next year, we'll fine-tune our heat recovery ventilators, and plan to recruit high-school students to assist our researchers with the health surveys and to introduce them to research. Hopefully, the day will come when respiratory syncytial virus season no longer means rows of nebulizer masks labelled with each child's name, in nearly every community's nursing station. - Tom Kovesi MD, Ottawa