WINNIPEG – Health Canada says the body bags sent to flu-stricken reserves in Manitoba were part of “routine restocking.”
Jim Wolfe, with the First Nations and Inuit health branch, says the body bags were part of a shipment of supplies intended for reserves to use over the winter.
He says reserves often have suicides, drownings and other deaths that require the body bags.
Wolfe says the department over-estimated how many bags would be needed by some reserves in preparation for the second wave of swine flu expected this fall.
He says Health Canada regrets the incident and apologizes to all First Nations for any alarm the shipment caused.
The federal health minister has formally ordered a probe into why the government sent the body bags with other flu supplies, calling what happened “insensitive and offensive.”
