Green MLA Megan Mitton says New Brunswickers are being failed by the lack of an investigation into what is causing a number of unexplained neurological conditions in the province.
“Even if it’s not a mystery, a new disease, there are people who have experienced symptoms that are not presenting normally and symptoms that don’t match the disease that they may have,” she said during a meeting of the legislature’s public accounts committee.
“There’s something that’s gone on and it appears the department of health has stopped looking into what could be going on.”
Mitton used the department of health’s appearance before the public accounts committee to question deputy chief medical officer of health Dr. Yves Leger about how the province is handling the mysterious cases and why it isn’t investigating more broadly.
The province first announced that it was looking into a cluster of almost 50 unknown neurological conditions two years ago. Following a review by a panel of six neurologists, the province said there was no reason to believe that the cases were linked or were an undiscovered illness and that they were likely explained by misdiagnoses of other conditions.
Because of those findings, Leger told the committee that the province isn’t tracking how many similar neurological conditions there are, or conducting a broader investigation into what may be causing them.
On Thursday The Guardian reported that the former provincial lead on the file, Dr. Alier Merrero, recently sent a letter to the federal and provincial public health authorities urging them to consider conducting environmental testing for the herbicide glyphosate. He writes in the letter that a number of his patients have shown exposure to the herbicide, often used in the province’s forestry industry, and worries that it could be linked to other environmental toxins.
He goes on to say that glyphosate has been linked to an increase in neuro-toxic cyanobacteria, better known as “blue-green algae,” which has become increasingly common in the region.
In recent years, some of Moncton’s drinking water reservoirs have seen blooms of blue-green algae, but Leger said there’s no evidence that any toxins have made their way into the city’s water supply.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health confirmed that the province had received the letter and is reviewing it, but reiterated that public health doesn’t believe there to be a mystery neurological condition in New Brunswick.
“As you know, this months-long investigation found no evidence that a neurological syndrome of unknown cause exists in New Brunswick, or that patients exhibited the same symptoms or shared any common illness,” Sean Hatchard said in an email.
Asked why the province isn’t doing environmental testing, even after receiving $5 million in federal funding to do so, Leger said a link between neurological cases would have to be established first, which the expert panel denies.
“What essentially would be required is for that group of experts, those six individuals, to have come back to us and said based on the pattern of disease and symptoms that they’re presenting we feel that they have something similar, that they have a similar condition,” he said.
Leger went on to say that even if some sort of environmental toxin was found, it doesn’t mean that it would be causing illness in the population.
“Looking at testing in the environment may indicate that we have something in the environment but for it to cause a health issue or concern there needs to be a pathway of exposure,” he said.
“Just by the virtue of testing the environment doesn’t necessarily link it to a risk to individuals or these individuals specifically.”
Mitton said the province needs to dig into what’s happening to those who are suffering from unexplained syndromes, even if they aren’t a linked, undiscovered condition.
“If this isn’t a huge population health thing and it’s a bunch of different things, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look into it just because it’s not fitting a certain case definition that they have,” she said in an interview.
“We need the minister of health to make sure that there’s an investigation into this. There’s patients who are sick and they don’t know why and they’re not getting better, they’re getting worse. And so we can’t let things go this way, we can’t just let people die and not get answers.”
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