Four tuberculous toddlers in an outdoor crib at the Fort San.

In 1933 Dr R.G. Ferguson, medical director of the Saskatchewan Anti-Tuberculosis League, proposed to the committee that vaccination trials be carried out among First Nations babies of the Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit in Saskatchewan.

At that time in Canada, the death rate from tuberculosis in the Firsts Nations population was ten times higher than in the rest of the population. The death rate for newborn Firsts Nations babies, as calculated by the health unit, was 1018.3 per 100,000.

The project was approved and turned out to be one of the better-controlled BCG trials conducted to that time. As in Quebec, the vaccine was first given by mouth, but soon the intradermal method was used because the results were likely to be more uniform. Families were divided into two groups: infants in one group were vaccinated one year while the other group served as controls, the groups being switched the following year. The results of Dr. Ferguson’s work helped to establish BCG vaccination programs in Canada and around the world in the fight against tuberculosis. -- modified from Wherrett, in The Miracle of the Empty Beds, 1977.