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Kivalliq firm puts on gala PR night for cancer clinic

Evening of hope? Or evening of hype?

An example of the kind of three-dimensional image that IDSI’s laser mammography device is able to display on a computer screen.

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(IMAGE CAPTURED FROM IDSI WEB SITE)

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JIM BELL

A private Kivalliq region firm, Piruqsaijiit Ltd., will stage a public relations extravaganza in Rankin Inlet next month to promote their future commercial use of a new U.S. laser device for detecting breast cancer.

Breast cancer rates among Inuit women are dramatically lower than in the rest of Canada.

Piruqsaijiit, however, is proposing to import the machine from Florida and use it to offer breast cancer screening to anyone in Canada willing and able to pay for it.

Hilary Rebeiro, Piruqsaijiit’s general manager, defends the idea with the evangelical zeal of a true believer, sprinkling his pitch with frequent references to "Inuit elders."

"Why not?" Rebeiro says. "Robert Kennedy once said, and my Inuit elders kind of share that view, ‘Some people see things as they are and ask why; we dream of things that never were and ask why not.’"

Piruqsaijiit, a management-services firm that operates as a kind of brain-trust for a family of interconnected property development firms in the Kivalliq region, decided to diversify into medical services about three years ago.

Imaging Diagnostics Systems Inc., or "IDSI," the machine’s Florida-based manufacturer, has given Piruqsaijiit exclusive rights to use the machine in Canada, Rebeiro said.

To promote the scheme and at the same time raise money for breast cancer research, Piruqsaijiit has invited a long list of people to an $80-a-ticket gala-dinner-concert at Maani Ulujuk school and the Siniktarvik hotel, in conjunction with a two-day cancer education campaign.

They’re calling their gala dinner the "Evening of Hope."

"We’ve invited the press from the Atlantic to the Pacific, every province, both newspapers and TV stations. We’re starting to see some reaction now," Rebeiro said.

Dr. Eric Milne, an IDSI employee Rebeiro calls "one of the foremost radiologists in the world," will make presentations and answer questions. School officials have allowed organizers to use classrooms for their "education" displays, Rebeiro said.

People who show up will also get to hear a country-and-western band from Toronto, local throat-singers and drum-dancers, and public testimonials from breast cancer survivors. A parallel event at the Siniktarvik hotel will provide "pre-dinner cocktails" and an open bar for those who want to drink after dinner.

"It’s going to be quite an event. One of the biggest we’ve had in Rankin," Rebeiro said.

Piruqsaijiit’s laser mammography clinic is an example of the kind of private, for-profit health service opposed by those who fear the growth of two health systems in Canada — a private system for people who can afford to pay for what they want on demand, and a lower-quality public system for everyone else.

And Rebeiro doesn’t deny that the service could be offered to affluent queue-jumpers who don’t want to wait in line for what’s available in the public system.

But he insists that the clinic won’t lead to a two-tier system in Nunavut — because his company won’t turn way anyone who can’t pay.

"There is no poor person, no Inuk woman in the North, who will be denied having her breasts examined because they cannot afford to pay," Rebeiro says.

Ed Picco, Nunavut’s minister of health and social services, leaves no doubt about where the territorial government stands on the future of health care in Canada.

"The government of Nunavut is strongly against any private, for-profit medical care," Picco said last week.

He also said breast cancer is rare among Inuit women, and that the number of women the Nunavut government sends south for diagnostic mammography screens is "minuscule."

"For 85 per cent of our population, it really isn’t an issue. I’m not trying to be hard-hearted, but they’re raising a red flag over something that’s not there," Picco said.

Health statistics recently released by the Nunavut government show that other forms of cancer are far more common among Inuit women. Cancer of the cervix, for example, is a major killer, affecting 35 per cent of all women diagnosed with cancer in Nunavut.

Another major killer is lung cancer, striking down Inuit women at a rate 5.3 times higher than the national average.

Rebeiro says that as lifestyles change, more Inuit women could suffer breast cancer in the future: "I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to deal with the significant issues with respect to cervical cancer, that’s very important. But should we overlook this very important tool that we’ve got?"

But Picco says until government regulators approve the laser mammography device, Piruqsaijiit’s proposal must remain hypothetical.

Neither Health Canada nor the United States Food and Drug Administration have approved it for routine diagnostic use in Canada or the U.S. — though the FDA has allowed IDSI to sell its product outside U.S. borders.

"Am I supporting the particular proposal brought forward by Piruqsaijiit? The answer is no, because I don’t even know if the piece of equipment he’s talking about will ever be able to be used in Canada," Picco says.

Piruqsaijiit, owned by the group of Kivalliq-based real estate management companies that it sells its services to, already supplies medical equipment to the Nunavut government "and anyone else who wants it," Rebeiro said.

He also said the company helped the Arviat Development Corporation build Arviat’s new health centre, which the Arviat firm is now leasing back to the Nunavut government under a 20-year agreement, and that it also leases space to a dental firm.

The new device it wants to import uses a laser beam that sweeps a woman’s breast as she lies face down. It sends a three-dimensional colour image to a computer, which shows many details that are too small for conventional

x-ray-based mammography machines to detect.

"We’re doing much earlier detection. We’re saving fees. We’re having greater clarity of results. We’re having less embarrassment by the women," Rebeiro says.

He also says the machine can be used to monitor the progress of breast cancer treatment, because it can easily be used to find out whether tumours are growing or shrinking.

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