A new report on the state of health in northern Saskatchewan communities has been released by the province’s three northern health regions.
Northern medical health officer Dr. James Irvine says statistics were gathered from a number of provincial and federal sources.
Irvine says injury, tobacco use, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases are cause for concern — but the news is not all bad.
He notes infant mortality rates are going down in the province’s north, while life expectancy is going up.
Irvine says there has also been “remarkable improvement” in diarrheal diseases, as well as marked reductions in vaccine-preventable diseases — noting hepatitis A used to be very common, and health professionals used to see more cases of meningitis.
The 2011 Northern Saskatchewan Health Indicators Report is a follow-up to similar studies done in 1998 and 2004.