Medical information

I have been remiss in giving a little background about the medical situation in Northwest Alaska. We are working out of schools in the smaller villages. Kotzebue, where I am stationed, is the large town for the area and has the tertiary care center for the region. The hospital is ran by Maniilaq, the tribe. The politics seem to be similar to Indian Health Services (IHS). The hospital accepts insurance or payment and native Eskimos receive free medical care. Our main purpose is to provide services that are in high demand for the area. It also seems the locals are in favor of seeing an Arctic Care doc for a second opinion on how the civilians doctors are treating them. I found that most of the time I changed minor things and then it was a matter of opinion as to what was the best way to treat a problem.

The ER is small but has a trauma room. One of the top reasons for medical care in the area is trauma, usually by snow mobile or ATV. There are a lot more snow machines and ATVs running on the streets than cars. Combine that with a high rate of alcoholism and you need a trauma bay. All major illnesses or injuries get flown here from the smaller villages. Big problems get pushed on to Anchorage. There is a radio room just off the ER that handles incoming calls from the villages. They direct care and the flow of communication there is constant.

Care in the smaller villages is usually provided by a CHAP. This is a lay person with training in basic EMT skills plus a little more. It's hard to imagine getting critically ill in one of these small villages.

The top illnesses I treated were extremely similar to what I see in Arkansas. It really surprised me. There is a large number of patients with atopic dermatitis, asthma and allergies. Yes, allergies. Folks complained about Spring up there just like we do. I didn't have any allergies problems there. I also didn't see any flowers or trees. Go figure.

There was plenty of hypertension, and I saw several teenagers with it. I don't know if it is an issue with obesity or genetics or both. In the older population there was plenty of diabetes, hypertension and cholesterol. Like I said, I felt right at home. My captain, the Rheumatologist, was kept very busy with rheumatoid arthritis. There has to be some genetics at work there.

It is the highest concentration of smokers I have seen in a long time. It would be interesting to see what Eskimos were like before we introduced them to cigarettes, sweets and alcohol.