My experience is in Nepal. It's exactly the issue of distribution. When we started this program, the CEO and myself felt that it was just about being able to count up the number of pills and the number of kids you save. Once you get into the field, you realize it's a lot more than that.
The issue in Nepal is that there's about 95% availability of zinc tablets, and only 7% use. The difference is primarily in the knowledge that's in the hands of the mothers and other health care workers. The effort is really around training, educating, and bringing people.... There are all sorts of fascinating ways they are doing that, but it's that part of the distribution chain that's the most difficult.
We take it for granted—that quality of food. When you think about it carefully, you realize these mothers are being offered maybe two choices. One has been sold to them for a long time, which is the antibacterial-type approach or antibiotics. What they don't know is that the diarrheas are primarily viral, and this solution has no use. But that's what they've been told in the past, and that's what they're counting on. If you bring something new, they're not confident that it will work. The risk factor is your child's life. So you can understand that they really have to learn and see. It's going to take time. It's sort of the way it goes.
I think this hearkens back to an earlier question to some degree—the notion of money and the volume of money. In my mind, the issue, and what I've seen out there, is it's the effective and efficient spending of the money that's important. That involves both a plan and then the monitoring, accounting for, and description afterwards.
What we're hoping to establish through our work with MI and CIDA is a model that allows the mobilization of some private sector money. Taxpayers won't be able to carry the whole load as this goes forward. We really have to find ways to mobilize private sector interests. Ours is one example. There are many others, such as Desjardins, and many of our colleague companies.
We need coordination of the effort, because there is a whole host of different organizations, each with their own particular interests. To some degree, they compete for the same dollars. To some extent, they bring different ideas to solve the same problem. Coordination is important, as well as effective mobilization of dollars from many sources, and the efficient, effective spending of those dollars.
It gets down into questions like "What is the real problem?" and trying to understand it. Is it the supply of vitamin A, zinc, or whatever it is? Is it the distribution system? Is it knowledge? There are people out there who increasingly know those answers, or at least they know them in a particular country's setting. But it may be different from one country to another, so they are starting to share knowledge among themselves. All of that is helping the whole thing out.