REGINA - The government of Saskatchewan is going to watch for any vaping-related illnesses in the province.
Health Minister Jim Reiter says there's no record of pulmonary illnesses associated with vaping in Saskatchewan, but he's asked health officials to monitor all potential cases in hospital intensive care units.
The province's chief medical health officer has also notified intensive care units that they are to report all cases of non-infectious severe respiratory disease possibly due to vaping to local medical health officers.
"Ultimately, in Canada, we want all such cases to be reported to the chief public health officer of Canada," Saskatchewan Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab said Friday.
"Are we seeing, in Canada, potentially going forwards, what the U.S. has been seeing over the past 30 days?"
At least one serious vaping-related illness has been reported in Ontario and more than 500 cases — including seven deaths — have been recorded in the United States.
"These are, for the most part, people who are otherwise young, healthy, with no pre-existing heart or lung disease who develop severe respiratory infection, get very ill, and unfortunately in some cases, die," said Shahab.
He said American public health officials learned that those who fell sick had vaped within the past 90 days. And in many cases they did so on a daily basis, using products that were not regulated, such as vaping pods with added substances like cannabis.
The president of the Canadian Medical Association recently has said youth vaping has become a public health crisis.
Reiter said in a statement that he's worried about how popular vaping is among young people. And he wants parents to warn their children about the risks.
Shahab said the province is proposing changes for the fall that would see vaping products treated the same way as tobacco ones, including includes not displaying them in retail stores and restricting sales to minors.
"I think that will be really important to address the overall trend of in youth vaping."