Tuberculosis within aboriginal communities in BC

Tuberculosis control for aboriginal persons living on reserve in British Columbia (BC) is administered out of the BC Centre for Disease Control through Tuberculosis Services for Aboriginal Communities, in partnership with the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Canada.

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major public health problem for aboriginal people in Canada due to the existing pool of latent TB infection and ongoing disease transmission. The incidence of TB remains more than 10 to 15 times that of the non-aboriginal/Canadian-born population.

As the overall incidence of tuberculosis disease in Canada declines, public health officials focus on the identification and management of latent TB infection (LTBI). It is important to identify LTBI among high-risk individuals and groups, including aboriginal communities, and complete INH treatment is offered in consultation with Tuberculosis Services for Aboriginal Communities.

Tuberculosis Services for Aboriginal Communities is actively involved in case finding and directly observed therapy, contact tracing and treatment of LTBI, high-risk community and individual surveillance, as well as health education, training, and research in the field of TB. Enhanced surveillance of children 5 years and under and individuals with risk factors for TB began 1 June 2004.

Your participation as front-line physicians in TB control efforts is paramount to the success of our program and the eventual elimination of TB in aboriginal communities. We encourage you to “think TB” and invite your questions and comments.

—Victoria Cook, MD 
Tuberculosis Services to Aboriginals
BC Centre for Disease Control

—Meenakshi Dawar, MD
Community Medicine Specialist
First Nations and Inuit Health Branch,
Pacific Region

Victoria J. Cook, MD, FRCPC, Meenakshi Dawar, MD. Tuberculosis within aboriginal communities in BC. BCMJ, Vol. 46, No. 6, July, August, 2004, Page(s) 274-275 - Letters.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply