Her mom's lung cancer was caught too late. It's part of a pattern in Nunavik

Nearly 17 years after her mother's death, Natasha Ita MacDonald, from Kuujjuarapik in northern Quebec, still wonders if she could have survived.

Louisa Tuckatuck MacDonald, died at 57, just seven months after doctors discovered a grapefruit-sized mass in her lungs and diagnosed her with Stage 4 cancer.

"If she had been living in Calgary or Montreal or Vancouver would it have been screened before?" questions MacDonald. "Would she have had a better chance?"

MacDonald thinks so.

The assistant professor of Indigenous education at McGill University says her mother's story highlights the failures in the health-care system in Nunavik.

MacDonald says her mom was only diagnosed after being sent to Montreal for a nagging cough. She had no idea it was cancer.

"As sad as it is, you know, if we can learn something from it, then that's what is important," said MacDonald. "It shouldn't happen to anyone else."

This month, a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and authored by physicians from the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and Nunavik health workers found that Nunavik patients had a shorter survival rate after lung cancer diagnosis than Montreal residents, even if they received the same treatment at the same centre.

The study compared the outcomes of 95 Nunavik residents to 185 Montreal residents who had been diagnosed at around the same time, had the same type of lung cancer and were in the same age group.

The results suggested lung cancer patients from Nunavik were 68 per cent more likely to die compared to Montreal residents and pointed to the fact that health services aren't well adapted to the needs of Inuit patients.

Dr. Faiz Ahmad Khan, a respirologist, associate professor at McGill and senior author of the study, says researchers analyzed the results with Nunavik community members.

"There was a complete lack of information on the outcome being achieved in this population," said Ahmad Khan.

"The solutions to these things are very complex."

Ahmad Khan says the motivation to conduct this study came from physicians' observations and the absence of literature on cancer-treatment outcomes of people who live in Nunavik.