I unfortunatly won't be able to attend this year with a planned meeting overlapping in a Copenhagen #WCLH2025 @theunion.org where I am also looking forward to meet some #GlobalHealthFriends and colleagues working on TB.
#GlobalHealth #EndTB

Wastewater surveillance must remain a public health tool, not a mechanism of control.
Read the article by Patrick D'Aoust here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#EpiSky #PublicHealth #MedicalEthics

As a public health physician, I’m deeply concerned when tools designed to protect and improve health are repurposed to restrict access to care. Such misuse undermines public trust, threatens privacy, and directly contradicts core medical and public health ethical principles.

At this same meeting, the WMA just adopted its Statement on Trans People, which calls on physicians to speak out against legislation that violates human rights.
www.wma.net/policies-pos...

This work will hopefully eventually allow all Nunavik communities to benefit from wastewater surveillance and have better tailored #PublicHealth interventions for all kinds of disease including outbreak prone infections, seasonal infections, regional challenges like TB, etc.

This week Judith Maréchal @ulaval.ca, Felix Addo @uottawa.ca, and Jacquelyn Yushkov @mcgillspgh.bsky.social worked hard with Billy Watt and all the drivers in the Kuujjuaq team to try out a new sampler and collect wastewater for analysis.
Photos by Judith Maréchal.

Nevertheless sampling in Nunavik is complex: most communities do not have piped sewer systems and sampling requires collecting from wastewater trucks.
It's great to be working with Stéphanie Guilherme @ulaval.ca and Robert Delatolla @uottawa.ca to develop methods for effective sampling!

Wastewater surveillance offers a few advantages:
• It doesn’t depend on individual testing uptake
• Can highlight silent transmission early
• Offers population-level data without stigma

Nunavik continues to face an unacceptably high burden of #tuberculosis with rates hundreds of times higher than elsewhere in the country. Improving early detection is key to effective outbreak response and wastewater could offer a complementary tool to act earlier.
#EndTB