We are working at a national level with the National Aboriginal Council on HIV/AIDS, giving direction to the Minister of Health in addressing HIV in Saskatchewan, primarily around the indigenous people. We're looking at approximately $100,000 a year for care, treatment, and support for somebody who is newly diagnosed with HIV. At the rate that HIV is increasing in this province, Saskatchewan could go bankrupt if all the indigenous people we're looking at had access to treatment or even to diagnosis. We would see something very great in this province that we would not be able to take care of cost-effectively.
Everyone recently received information that there were 30 doctors in Saskatchewan who declared a state of emergency, yet the provincial government is not doing anything about it. The Public Health Agency of Canada just released an HIV and hepatitis C program for 2017 and has cut operational funding to many long-time AIDS organizations in Canada and in Saskatchewan. We're faced with that today in looking at how we can take better care of human beings who are living with HIV, diagnosed or undiagnosed. In the city of Regina, one of the infectious disease doctors, Doctor Wong, has done research comparable to Calgary. Indigenous people who walk in the door are walking in one day and dying the next day or the same day with AIDS. AIDS is a disease that is a chronic illness in Canada, yet in Saskatchewan last year there were three babies born with HIV. Why is that? We question. Those three young ones who were born in this province with HIV have every right to ask as they grow, why they were born with HIV. What happened within the institutions, the systems, and the agencies that are supposed to be providing care, treatment, and support? Why are they growing up with HIV?
Those are questions that we ask, and questions that we want the government to ask in terms of how they're addressing care, treatment, and support for indigenous people. We're at twice the national average in this province. If we look at the rates, 13.8 per 100,000 people in Saskatchewan are infected with HIV; in Canada, it's 7.8 per 100,000. The majority of the people presenting are indigenous.