In case of emergency: N.W.T. and Yukon get new mobile health clinics

Communities across the Northwest Territories and Yukon now have access to mobile emergency clinics that can be shipped anywhere in the territories if there's a natural disaster or disease outbreak.

Health care staff from across the Northwest Territories are in Yellowknife this week to learn how to set up and take down the mobile clinics, which are on loan to the territories from the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The clinics come with several hospital beds, defibrillators, X-ray machines and intravenous equipment.

"If one of our health centres became non-functional, [in the event of a] flood, fire, we could send this in and set it up in an alternate location — a school gym, a Fort McPherson tent," said Debbie DeLancey, the N.W.T.'s deputy health minister.

Steve Moss, a health emergency planner with the N.W.T. Department of Health, says he could see the territories using the clinics if there were evacuations due to wildfires.

He says the clinics can also be used to deal with overflow if community hospitals or health centres are overwhelmed.

"If we set something like this up, [the mobile clinics] can take care of the minor issues and allow the more pressing problems to be dealt with at the health care centre itself."

Moss says similar mobile clinics were used in communities that took in evacuees of the Fort McMurray wildfire this summer.

The new clinics will be stored in Yellowknife and Whitehorse but can be shipped and set up in a community within a few hours.