Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. Sorry; just to clarify, I agree with that statement, but again, we need to distinguish between drug-sensitive and drug-resistant TB. For drug-sensitive TB, that statement is true. For drug-resistant TB, that's not happening at the moment. We need to in

Foreign Affairs committee  Again, maybe I'm not the best person to answer that. An overly simplistic answer might be that there's just not the incentive there. There aren't enough children being diagnosed with drug-resistant TB in order for a pharmaceutical company to say, “Let's invest in making a child-f

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, there are estimates and there is the actual number of cases being diagnosed. Because it's so difficult to diagnose TB in children, very few children end up in these actual statistics and data.

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, maybe I'm sounding a bit too negative. Just to put a positive frame on it, pharmaceutical companies have to work together with governments and with researchers to develop what we need. We don't have what we need yet, especially to control the drug-resistant TB epidemic, esp

Foreign Affairs committee  Just to reinforce what Helen said, as an incentive for diagnosis there has to be a good treatment available. For drug-resistant TB, there's not a good treatment available. If and when there is, diagnosis improves, we diagnose everybody, we treat everybody, they quickly become non

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. Again, I'm not the best person to answer this. My experience is mainly working overseas, but it is true that within Canada there are pockets where TB continues to be a problem. In my mind, I'm just speaking for myself here, it's sad to come back to Ca

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. In order to diagnose TB we need to try to get a specimen. Usually we try first to get a sputum specimen. So for an adult that's not usually a problem if they're coughing, but to have a young child cough and produce sputum that we can test in a lab, th

Foreign Affairs committee  The short answer is for drug-sensitive TB, yes; for drug-resistant TB, no way. Drug-resistant TB is a problem that's only going to get worse unless we invest now. If we don't invest now, 20 years from now it's going to be twice the problem and much more expensive. So it requires

Foreign Affairs committee  I would repeat that as well. I think an important point is related to operational research. The money that Canada has contributed to the Global Fund is fantastic, but the problem remains that treatment is too difficult for most people to take. So we need to put some money into lo

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm sorry, but I'm not the best person to answer that. As it stands now though—sorry it was....

Foreign Affairs committee  As it stands now, the only vaccination we have for TB is called BCG. It's given to children. It's mildly effective for children. It helps to reduce a serious type of TB in children, but for the most part it's not effective for adults and is not given to adults.

Foreign Affairs committee  The people at risk of developing TB are those with weakened immune systems, so those who are HIV-positive, diabetics, malnourished people, children under the age of five, and the elderly. If children under the age of five receive this BCG vaccination early in life, they tend not

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a very good question. Of course 100 years ago, when there was no treatment available at all, a third of people would spontaneously cure, another third of people would get sick and die, and the last third would go on to develop chronic TB symptoms. They would be transmitti

Foreign Affairs committee  There are two answers to that question. One is drug-sensitive TB, which is curable at a relatively low cost and has a tolerable treatment. This is possible for drug-resistant TB, although with the current regimen we have available we're just not able to give that treatment to e

Foreign Affairs committee  This is the key at the moment, or one of the keys; it's investing more in research. Fortunately, two new anti-TB drugs have come along in the last couple of years. The thing is that we don't know yet how to use these in combination. We can't just use one anti-TB drug to effect a