WINNIPEG - Schools are closed, public events have been cancelled and people are scrambling for masks to fight the swine flu.

Leaders in some remote aboriginal communities in northeastern Manitoba, where high infection rates have caught the attention of the World Health Organization, say they are now in full pandemic mode.

"We've had to shut the school down. We've had to sanitize the whole school, the school buses, sanitize the medical transportation vehicles and also the police stations ... twice a day," Chief David Harper of the Garden Hill First Nation said Wednesday.

"We're fighting an invisible enemy."

Many residents are either sick or are fearful of becoming sick because they live in overcrowded homes with someone who is ill, Harper said. Travel into the community is being limited.

Harper was in Winnipeg on Wednesday to meet with other chiefs and to pick up medical supplies such as facial masks, which he says have run out in his community.

There is no hospital in the region and nursing stations are overwhelmed, he said. The federal and provincial governments have flown more doctors and nurses into the area in recent days, but it is not yet clear whether the spread can be contained.

Manitoba health officials confirmed a second case of swine flu in Garden Hill on top of a handful of confirmed cases in nearby St. Theresa Point. More than a dozen other people have been hospitalized with flu-like symptoms - all in a remote area 500 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg that has fewer than 10,000 residents.

One of the youngest victims is 18-month-old Peter Flett, who is recovering after being released from hospital in Winnipeg. The young boy was feverish for several days last week, but his mother says she was unable to convince staff at the Garden Hill nursing station to take his case seriously.

"He had a pale face and non-stop coughing, high fever," Christina Flett said, her young boy still wearing a mask as he bounced on her knee.

"They told me not to bring him back, then I kept on phoning ... they told me to just soak him and give him a bath and that's all."

The boy was eventually airlifted to Winnipeg after waiting several hours for a flight.

Experts believe influenza can hit aboriginal communities hard because of underlying conditions such as poverty, overcrowded homes and high rates of other diseases such as diabetes. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 proved especially tough on reserves and wiped out large segments of the population.

Flett lives in her father's three-bedroom home with 10 other people, because her own house is full of mould.

"My baby gets sick easily. Last time he had ... double pneumonia on both lungs 'cause of my house. It's ... very mouldy," she said. "That's why we moved to my dad's."

The World Health Organization has expressed concern about aboriginals in Canada and swine flu. While the vast majority of people do not fall seriously ill, 27 Manitobans have been on hospital ventilators - more than half of them aboriginal.

Manitoba's northern chiefs are demanding improved housing and health care services. They say a hospital with permanent doctors would go a long way toward improving health care in the region.

In the House of Commons, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq rejected opposition accusations that the government has failed to protect First Nations.

"Since April of this year we have been acting on our pandemic plan, which includes First Nations communities," she said.

"Our government invested $1 billion to increase our preparedness to respond to public health threats, such as a pandemic, which includes First Nations communities."