Jim Wolfe, regional director with the First Nations and Inuit health branch of Health Canada, said Thursday that the bags were part of a shipment intended for reserves to use over the winter and were not “linked exclusively to H1N1.”
“We really regret the alarm this incident has caused and it was unintended,” Wolfe said. “We order these supplies as a matter of routine business and ... this was part of a very normal restocking process.”
Reserves often have suicides, drownings and other deaths that require the bags, he said. In this case, Wolfe said the department “over-estimated” how many bags might be needed during a resurgence of swine flu expected this fall.
When determining the number of bags to send, Wolfe said the department takes into consideration the difficulty reaching fly-in communities during winter.
“Supplies are constantly being restocked to prepare for unknown and unforeseen events.”
While many aboriginal leaders interpreted the shipment of body bags as a “grim prediction” of the number of deaths expected among remote communities, Wolfe said that’s not the case.
Cord wood.