Today the B.C. government announced the province's first reported deaths due to the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu. In unrelated cases, an unidentified seven year-old child and a 20 year-old woman both succumbed to the disease late last week.

Despite these recent deaths, the pig flu panic has all but blown over for most of us; out of 9,855 confirmed cases nationwide, there have only been 39 deaths associated with the virus.

But if you happen to live in rural Canada and you happen to be First Nations, it's a different story.

The Globe and Mail has a story in tomorrow's issue about a predicted shortage of vaccines and medical supplies on Aboriginal reserves in Canada this fall.

The U.S. recently announced they expect to have developed a vaccine by October, and health officials in Canada are now discussing who should get the vaccine in Canada. Aboriginal leaders fear First Nations reserves will be last in line to receive the vaccine despite having higher instances of the disease.

Their fears can hardly be considered unfounded if you remember the recent debacle when the federal government withheld shipments of hand sanitizer to rural Manitoba reserves with several cases of H1N1 because of fears that the high alcohol content of the sanitizers would lead people to consume and abuse it.

The government also failed to send other supplies, such as flu masks and respirators, despite the Globe reported statistics that the infection rate of First Nations people in the province is 135 out of every 100,000 people, compared to 20 out of every 100,000 people Canada-wide.

There are no official poverty stats for B.C. Aboriginal reserves since reserves are excluded from the Statistics Canada Census. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that if there is a high rate of off-reserve Aboriginal poverty in B.C., it is likely life on the reserve is not very rosey either.

B.C. might not have the high rates of H1N1 now, but scientists are predicting we could see another wave of infections, this time even worse, come this fall.

Ottawa should not be allowed to get away with putting impoverished communities, no matter their race or cultural background, on the bottom of the vaccine receiving totem pole.

Otherwise, though we may not have brought this disease over on ships from the East, our government will be just as responsible for the Aboriginal deaths that will occur from H1N1 as the settlers were responsible for introducing small pox to First Nations people several centuries ago.