VICTORIA, B.C.—According to "The First Nations Population Health and Wellness Agenda" report released in late August, life expectancy for First Nations people dropped by six years.
The multi-year project was introduced in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic and the toxic drug crisis in British Columbia are being blamed for life expectancy for First Nations people in B.C. dropping from 73.3 years to 67.2 years and the mortality rate jumped from 117 people dying early per 10,000 population three years ago to 156 per 10,000 population now.
"Life expectancy at birth, or as we're calling it, Living Long lives and Mortality have both worsened. And the main driver remains deaths due to the toxic drug crisis public health emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic," Dr. Nell Wieman, chief Medical Health Officer at the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA) of B.C. told APTN news.
The original data contained 22 indicators of health and the update contains new data in 14 of those indicators. Of the other 12, infant mortality and education rates showed modest improvement, while others showed no change.
"The findings in this report are not just numbers. They represent individuals, families and loved ones," Wieman said. "They are people who are missing from our dinner tables, they're missing from our ceremonies. Generations of people have been affected."
According to Statistics Canada 2021 Census data, 290,210 people or 5.9 percent of the province's population identified as Indigenous in BC.
