The late September outbreak of legionnaire’s disease in Toronto has prompted a Queen’s University faculty member to investigate what caused the deaths of 17 elderly people.
Dr. David Walker, dean of health sciences, was appointed Monday by George Smitherman, provincial minister of health and long-term care, to lead an independent review into the outbreak.
The disease, which killed and infected residents and staff at the Seven Oaks Home for the Aged, will be examined by Walker and his panel. Their report will be made available to the Minster of Health and the public at the end of November.
“It’s a way of looking at it critically, the way we handled this thing [the outbreak of legionnaire’s], if we need other tools,” Walker said.
Walker also chaired an expert panel on SARS, the viral respiratory illness that killed 44 people in Toronto in the spring of 2003. Walker said he hopes the lessons learned from SARS helped in the response to the legionnaire’s outbreak.
“We were really not prepared for what happened [with SARS] in a lot of ways,” he said.
“[We can] use this as a test for if those program and policies and paradigms were useful.
“We created a tool box, and [I want] to see if we can use it.”
Walker said that he was contacted by Smitherman last week about chairing the committee.
He said the panel will be focused on more than just the current outbreak, but also on how a city handles disease.
“The issue isn’t so much the legionnaire’s, but how do you handle an illness that strikes 100 people in a building [or] handle an unknown bug that affects a city?
“How do you handle the avian flu when it comes—it will come—[and] is expected to kill 100 million people?”
Walker added he thinks the health care system needs to focus more on public health promotion.
“We have, over the last 50 years, not invested as much as we could [in] promoting health,” he said. “Walkerton occurs because the water is not safe, an epidemic kills a large number of people with SARS, public health is the way we look over the population as a whole, not individuals, [so this panel is] an opportunity to look ahead.”
Walker said he is excited about the opportunity to head the review.
“[It is] very exciting … [an] interesting endeavor,” he said. “I hope it produces something useful for everybody.”
—With files from cdc.gov and the Toronto Star
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