Grant: Catalyst Grant: Safe Food and Water in Northern Communities

There are widespread concerns about the risk of outbreaks of food and water borne bacterial, viral and parasitic infections transmitted through unsafe food and water in Canadian Northern Aboriginal communities. These infections cause symptoms like diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain and fever. In some cases, severe complications such as kidney failure, anemia (low blood), arthritis, and paralysis can result from these infections. We believe the first step in dealing with food and water borne illnesses is accurate diagnosis of their causes. This will help ensure patients receive appropriate treatment and, on a community level, will help prevent the spread of the infection to others. However, the causes of the vast majority of diarrheal infections go undiagnosed because of the poor sensitivity of current diagnostic methods. Development of a rapid diagnostic assay that enables simultaneous screening of multiple food and water pathogens in these communities is therefore urgently needed. We plan to devise such a multiple diarrheal pathogen assay using an innovative new technology that we have pioneered the use of in Canada, known as nanolitre real-time PCR. Our aim is to be able to diagnose the 20 most important bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections at the same time, in only a few hours. We will evaluate this diagnostic panel in comparison to conventional currently used using diarrheal specimens from Northern aboriginal communities. We believe the multiple pathogen panel will radically improve and accelerate the diagnosis of food and water borne diarrheal illness in Northern aboriginal communities. Physicians and health authorities can then use this information for the benefit of the both the individual and the community.