Public Health

Cree healers and doctors unite to fight diabetes

In native communities, using therapeutic properties of naturally occurring substances is nothing new. Native elders and healers have given plants to patients for eons. Could they hold secrets that the modern medicine has not discovered yet? This question piqued the interest of Pierre Haddad, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology in the Faculty of Medicine. For almost five years, this diabetes specialist has been attending conferences on ethnopharmacology, which deals with traditional remedies used by native populations. In 1998, he began a collaboration with herbalists in Morocco in order to learn more about plants used in the Maghreb to treat diabetes. Through this project, he hopes to clear up the mysteries of nigella (also called black caraway), a plant used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years.

The collaboration with Morocco has only just begun, but Professor Haddad is making headway. In October 2003, the researcher had received $900,000 from the institute of the Health of the Natives of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (IRSC) to study the medicinal practices of healers and attempt to improve the Health of the northern Québec Cree, especially as regards diabetes. The funds will be distributed over three years.

“I dreamed of working with the native populations of Québec,” says Mr. Haddad. “These communities face serious diabetes problems. In the Cree population, the incidence of the illness has climbed from 4.1% in 1989 to 12.5% 2002. The methods of modern medicine, which is based on better nutrition and physical activity, are not very popular in these communities. The Cree have to use plants that they find in the boreal forest. I want to know how efficient and safe these remedies are, and if it is possible to combine traditional methods with modern medicine to achieve better results.”

The team headed by professor Haddad is made up of five specialists: Alain Cuerrier, a botanist who is in charge of the First Nations Garden at the Montréal Botanical Gardens; Tim Johns, a nutritionist and ethnobotanist from McGill University; John Arnason, a phytochemist from University of Ottawa; Dr Marc Prentki, a diabetes expert in the University of Montréal Health Centre; and Manon Dugas, a coordinator with the James Bay Cree Health and Social Services Council. In addition to its CIHR support, the project will be subsidized by the Natural Health Products Directorate, a new agency under Health Canada.