Thank you.
Thanks, Chris.
Teck and its predecessor company, Cominco, have been mining, smelting, refining, and selling zinc for a hundred years. Only in the last decade have we understood that it's not just a product that galvanizes steel and keeps your garbage cans from rusting; it's really a wonder element. It's crucial for human health. Children who are deficient in zinc end up stunted in growth. They end up not incapacitated, but with reduced capacity mentally. Crops that don't have enough zinc are deficient in terms of quality and quantity.
When it comes to tackling the issue of zinc deficiency, there are four uses. First is for acute deficiency. It can prevent deaths from diarrhea or the complications associated with diarrhea. Second is for chronic deficiency, which leads to growth and mental retardation. Third is the actual fortification of foodstuffs, which will affect not only children but the population generally. Fourth, ultimately, is the fortification of fertilizers, which in theory will actually improve the quality of the grain and the rice and so on grown in the zinc-sufficient soils. We can maybe eradicate a problem that today contributes something in the order of 450,000 deaths a year among children under five, according to UNICEF and WHO.
We're very pleased to have partnered with the Micronutrient Initiative and the Government of Canada on the Zinc Alliance for Child Health to try to recognize this role. We'd certainly like to thank the committee for inviting us here to talk about this.
Teck is a resource company, a mining and metals company, based in Vancouver. It has operations in the western hemisphere from 1000 miles north of Anchorage in Alaska through to southern Chile. We produce zinc, as I've already said, metallurgical or steel-making coal, and copper. We sell to markets around the world. We are one of the largest producers of zinc.
We have supported zinc health initiatives directly with MI and also through the International Zinc Association, together with UNICEF.
The world challenge is not that there is an insufficient quantity of zinc in the world. It's really about distributing it and getting it into the hands of the mothers who look after their children and understand the need to get zinc into their diets. It's education, it's distribution, and it's working within the supply chain. But the supply chain isn't so much the issue.
We've been working with MI for quite a number of years to actually formulate the partnership we're now executing, first with the program in Senegal and then, potentially, in other countries, as Chris mentioned. We launched the program last June. We're very excited to be able to continue it. With our resources, MI's knowledge and capability on the ground, the support of CIDA, other partners as we go forward--we're looking to bring other companies and other organizations, such as Save the Children, into this--and UNICEF, we can strengthen health programs around the world.
It's fascinating. As Chris says, we can save lives. For vitamin A, it's 4¢ a tablet or 2¢ a tablet. Treatment with zinc and oral rehydration salt together virtually eliminates the consequences of diarrhea. The zinc strengthens the immune system. The oral rehydration salts rehydrate the body. For 25¢ a treatment, you save the life of a child under five. So the more collaboration and partnership we can bring to it, the more resources and capability can be achieved.
We are always asked why we are involved in this. It's primarily to save the lives of children, to give back, and to do something we can be recognized for as a company. Our employees are extremely enthusiastic about this. It's amazing to see them and feel the vibrant enthusiasm they have, whether they are collecting money from each other or purchasing from our website. Employees can purchase material that has a zinc and health logo. They really get engaged.
It's certainly not a matter of selling more zinc. The amount of zinc that would be required to meet all of human need would amount to maybe 2% of our annual production—one tenth of 1% of the annual production of the whole industry. It's really immaterial from a transactional point of view. It's about reputation, global citizenship and doing the right thing. Having the opportunity within a product that we produce to be able to contribute so much is really quite exciting.
When you look at zinc deficiency, about a third of the world's population is actually zinc deficient. Zinc deficiency contributes to the death of about one and a half million children per year. Half a million of those, according to WHO and UNICEF studies and other scientific evidence, could be saved through the treatment that I mention. As we've seen the opportunity to contribute to a global issue, we've kind of stood up to the plate and taken the steps that we can take.
As an aside for a moment, in 2008 an organization called the Copenhagen Consensus Center—which some of you may have heard of—asked eight scientists, five of whom were Nobel laureates, how, if they had $50 billion to spend, they would spend it to make the world a better place. The top of their top ten list was vitamin A and zinc deficiency treatments, partly because zinc saves the lives of people with diarrhea, but also because of the IQ gain of populations in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and parts of South America that are zinc deficient. The IQ gain would just add to economic growth. When you see that kind of substantial and well-researched evidence, you think there's nothing better you can actually get into.
Teck Resources Limited is part of the United Nations Global Compact. As such, we have to commit activity and effort to achieve millennium development goals. In Teck Resources Limited's case, we've chosen MDG 4, to reduce by two thirds between 1990 and 2015 the death rate for children under five years old.
What the Micronutrient Initiative was doing meshed together perfectly with our global compact commitments on zinc, and gave us this opportunity. We hope we can take the Zinc Alliance for Child Health, with MI and CIDA, well beyond the scope and scale it's now at. The first program—the one we're in now—is Canadian. We believe that it could be replicated in countries like Australia, where there are zinc producers, government aid agencies, and potentially others. You could have a Zinc Alliance for Child Health in Australia, the U.S., or the U.K. We can bring in other partners from the NGO community, we hope, and Save the Children may be one. We can go beyond that in terms of other partnerships, such as the one that the IZA has with Zinc Saves Kids.
There are organizations around the world, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and GAIN, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, that have recognized the importance of zinc and are moving forward. In some ways, we're leading the way. We think our work is quite path-breaking in terms of the private-public partnership that it represents.
Thank you.