Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to present and also welcome you to winter on the Prairies. It's absolutely delightful.
I'm going to change gears a little bit and talk about the issue of infectious diseases, and specifically Canada's role in what is a global threat from both agricultural and human health perspectives.
The threat of infectious disease continues to be a major issue on this planet. Up to half of all deaths each year are caused by infectious diseases, depending on which statistics one uses. About two-thirds of deaths in children under the age of five are due to infectious disease. This is something that is important on a global basis. We often think this problem is only in less developed countries, and that is not true. Canada is at risk in the human health field. Infectious disease is always among the top 10 killers every year and, in fact, it can be as high as number three on the list.
In Saskatchewan, the prevalence of tuberculosis in first nations communities is about 50 times higher than it is elsewhere in the province. If you go to Nunavut, that goes up to over 200 times higher. Those figures rival what you see in sub-Saharan Africa, and yet we're very complacent about it.
Of course, in the animal world the threat of infectious disease continues to be a problem as well. We've seen influenza in British Columbia and depopulation of birds in the Fraser Valley. BSE cost the country over $6.3 million and, of course, the social upheaval in rural communities that went along with that is not taken into account.
We also see new pathogens arise every year. The most recent in the agricultural field was a pig virus, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus or PEDV, which entered Canada in 2014 and has caused between $900 million and $1.8 billion in losses. This is very significant. I might add that VIDO-InterVac has actually come up with a vaccine for that disease, which is currently being used to control outbreaks in Manitoba.
We have relied on things like antibiotics for disease control for decades. However, we're being challenged now by the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens and a variety of other factors. We believe vaccines represent a sustainable and cost-effective method of disease control, one in which Canada has historically taken a leadership position, going back to the smallpox and polio vaccines all the way up to those of the current day. However, we're starting to lose that competitive advantage, and this has gone on over the last 10 to 15 years. Part of it is due to key gaps in our infrastructure in this country, and one of these is found in the manufacturing of vaccines.
This affects all public sector as well as private sector researchers. Indeed we usually go south of the border when we want things done. We're doing that right now. The Ebola virus vaccine that came out of Canada was developed in 2005 and couldn't be made in this country. The vaccine that was tested in West Africa came out of the United States. We need to do something in this field.