Charlie Coleman was shaken by the death of his daughter-in-law last July. Patricia Kilmury, 27, died after contracting hantavirus, a disease known to have killed 12 people across Western Canada in the past decade. The virus is carried by deer mice, which are common across the Prairies.
Coleman believes his daughter-in-law contracted the virus on his McAuley, Man., farm.
“It’s a tragic thing and you think because the mouse was on your farm you probably caused her to die.”
There have been 32 confirmed cases of hantavirus in Western Canada, with a third of those proving fatal to the people infected. The disease triggers flu-like symptoms such as chills, body aches and fever. The virus attacks a person’s lungs and can cause the victim to suffocate or go into shock.
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Coleman set out last year to eliminate the deer mice at his farm. After the death of his daughter-in-law, he learned that a quarter of the deer mice on his farm were carrying the hantavirus disease. And the mice were plentiful.
“Now that we know what we’re dealing with, it doesn’t scare us a whole pile,” Coleman said. “But when you don’t know, it scares the hell out of you.”
Coleman thinks more should be done to control the deer mouse population in Manitoba. People in areas with infected mice are unknowingly playing a game of Russian roulette, he said.
“The mouse isn’t carrying a tag around its neck saying, ‘I’m hantavirus.’ “
Coleman wants Manitoba’s government to adopt a rodent control program similar to those in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
In Saskatchewan, residents can obtain poison for rodent control free from their rural municipalities. The province shares in the cost of the program.
The Manitoba government hopes to have a strategy in place this year for combating hantavirus.
Coleman also is volunteering to speak about the deadly virus before church and farm groups that want to learn more.
Robbin Lindsay, a research scientist at the federal virology lab in Winnipeg, said public education is a cornerstone in preventing hantavirus.
There are precautions people should take when they encounter deer mice or their habitats, he said. Information about those measures is available through public health offices.
“Not every deer mice will get you,” Lindsay said. “But the recommendation I make to the public is you treat every animal like it is infected and you cover all the bases.”
People can be exposed to the virus through contact with an infected deer mouse, its droppings, urine or saliva.
Coleman said, “We do not want anyone else to have to pay this very high cost and lose someone, due to ignorance and not knowing how to live with these deer mice.”
