Manitoba premier promises to change incarceration policy for people with tuberculosis

This 1966 microscope photo provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacilli, the organism responsible for causing the disease tuberculosis. (Elizabeth S. Mingioli/CDC via AP)

WINNIPEG — Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says he wants to ensure the provincial government never again incarcerates someone for having tuberculosis.

Kinew says he has asked for a public health order to make sure people are not sent to jail to try to ensure they do not infect others.

His comments follow a CBC report about a woman from God's Lake First Nation, a remote fly-in community, who spent a month in custody.

A medical officer said Geraldine Mason wasn't consistently taking the medication needed to cure her tuberculosis, an infectious disease that can be fatal if not treated, the CBC reported.

The Public Health Act in Manitoba allows medical officers to apply to a justice to apprehend someone who is not complying with a communicable disease order.

The law says the person can be detained, but does not specify what kind of locations can be used for detention.

Mason, 36, has no criminal record and ended up being housed with several other cellmates in the general population at the Women's Correctional Centre near Winnipeg, the CBC reported.

"I read the story this morning. I reached out to most senior people in the government and I said 'Get me an order ensuring that nobody is ever jailed for having tuberculosis again,"' Kinew told reporters Monday.

"That's just not the right way to do it."

The province's chief public health officer, Dr. Brent Roussin, was preparing to sign such an order, Kinew said.

Although rare, there have been previous cases where people with tuberculosis have been detained for allegedly not following treatment orders and posing a threat to others.

Mason told the CBC she was supposed to go to the nursing station and take her medication in front of a health-care worker, but did not always get to the nursing station before it closed. She took her pills but sometimes missed doses, she said.

   This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 2, 2024.