Veterans Affairs committee  Again, I'd just like to reiterate my thanks for the opportunity to be here with you to speak and for your concern about the health and well-being of our veterans. We work very hard with Veterans Affairs Canada to try to make sure that those who suffer illness as a result of their

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't know what actually happened, personally, with respect to the clinical trial. I have read the Auditor General's report, and I have no reason to not believe what our Auditor General reported at that time with respect to the trial. That is a matter of record already, I think

Veterans Affairs committee  The medical records of the day of those individual patients may show whether there was a consultation with a clinician in accordance with the clinical trial, but beyond that, I'm not sure what else you could look at.

Veterans Affairs committee  The approach we've taken to get a good understanding of the mental health burden in the Canadian Armed Forces is that we had a very significant survey done through Statistics Canada in which members of the Canadian Armed Forces were interviewed to identify those who had symptom c

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm using the information we have, not just from within the Canadian Armed Forces. I believe what we have, writ large, for those who have received mefloquine is that one in 11,000 or one in 13,000 persons may experience a severe reaction to mefloquine.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's one out of 11,000.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's not a common story that we hear. We hear often about the effects of our operations, whether in a conflict, in providing humanitarian assistance, or in undertaking disaster response, on mental illness. This is why it is very difficult to say that there's a causal relationship

Veterans Affairs committee  So there are confounding factors that you have to take into consideration.

Veterans Affairs committee  Usually when a medication is prescribed that people are taking in theatre, members of the Canadian Armed Forces are advised that if they're having some concerns with any effects they may think are attributable to the drug, they should come forward and tell us about those so that

Veterans Affairs committee  We do have a scheduled post-deployment enhanced screening that occurs between three and six months after a six-month deployment. We don't do specific screening while they are in theatre. They are aware and have access to health care providers should they start to have some sympto

Veterans Affairs committee  My initial comment about the reduction was not about the media. My initial comment was about the fact that we, in 2004, started to really sit down and educate all of our patients around the risks, benefits, and potential adverse effects of all of the choices for antimalarials, wh

Veterans Affairs committee  Unfortunately, it's only been probably in the last 10 to 15 years that we've really started to track what's going on with respect to mental health outcomes. The best data we have with respect to mental illness as a result of deployment really starts around the Afghanistan time fr

Veterans Affairs committee  That would be very mission specific. Any of our physicians could be called upon to prescribe anti-malaria medication. We also, though, have recently permitted, as is the case across many of the provincial jurisdictions, pharmacists to have that discussion and provide malaria ch

Veterans Affairs committee  There are two processes. The small number of people who are going away, as I explained earlier, will likely have that encounter with a physician. When we have larger groups of personnel going out, there may be a larger body of people brought together for a briefing by either a