Okay.
My second is a recommendation that relates to the quality of aid and Canada's capacity for incredible leadership in the area of child survival and maternal health.
If you can imagine 1,000 preschool classrooms full of children in Canada being wiped out every single day and future leaders, doctors, teachers, and our collective hopes for the next generation wiped out with them.... Around the world, even more than that die each day from preventable disease and illness. Close to nine million children under five years old succumb to a host of health challenges. But this is remarkably a story of hope: that number has been cut in half from 20 years ago. That's because we know what works when it comes to saving children's lives. Basic immunizations, bed nets to curb malaria, zinc, oral rehydration therapies, all of these cost-effective interventions cost pennies. Canada has been a leader on many of these fronts and we can be a global leader again. In 2007 the Canadian government announced an initiative called the catalytic initiative to save a million lives. We're calling on you to expand that initiative and to show Canadians pride in our place in the world by putting Canada at the centre of global leadership on that front.
Our third and final recommendation is to ask you to renew and increase Canada's pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Together those three diseases kill six million people every single year.
This is not just a sad story from a place far away. Every second someone in the world is infected with tuberculosis. It is a disease that is transmitted through the air. Last year alone 1.7 million people died of TB, even though it costs $20 to treat. I think swine flu has killed about 1,700 people around the planet so far. These diseases are also a huge drain on economic growth. Malaria alone costs the African continent about $12 billion annually to address. This aid helps ease the strain on governments and frees up resources for other priorities. But the global fund is bankrupt and it needs our commitment and our resources. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was a G8 commitment in 2001. It has saved 3.5 million lives since then. Next year when Canada has the eyes of the world on us and we host the G8, our greatest legacy of the G8 may be that the global fund has run dry.
To conclude, please consider recommending that aid, especially impactful and effective aid, not get lost in these deliberations. The eyes of the world will be on us in 2010. Let's live up to the leadership, compassion, and vision that this opportunity affords.