Good.
Ms. Biggs, thank you very much for attending.
If I may, I will just take 30 seconds on politics, then we'll get more into your area.
I must say that I have been dismayed and disappointed at the fact that Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberals have decided to introduce a topic into this issue that has nothing to do with this issue, and the fact that it, in turn, will create a massive disservice to the women and children of the developing world by us being diverted and the amount of ink that there has been on this issue as a result of him introducing an absolute red herring, a bogus issue, into this debate.
That said, I must say that I'm very impressed with your statement, if I may read it:
With proper planning and resource mobilization, it is within the reach of many developing countries to prevent the deaths of mothers and children by strengthening health systems, training health workers and providing simple solutions like inoculations, insecticide-treated bed nets, and better nutrition.
This is what the original thought was of the Prime Minister, and certainly of our government.
I was particularly impressed, because this morning all of us received the chair's summary of the G8 development ministers meeting, which I think will go an awful long way to answering the concerns of Mr. Rae about foreign nations making comments about the topic that he chooses to bring up.
I'll take look at clause 11 of the chair's report:
In terms of scope, Ministers agreed that improving maternal and under-five child health requires comprehensive, high impact and integrated interventions at the community level, in country, across the continuum of care from pre-pregnancy through delivery to the age of five, including such elements as: antenatal care; post-partum care; family planning, which includes contraception; reproductive health; treatment and prevention of diseases; prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV; immunizations; and nutrition.
This is an awfully big basket we're talking about, to be able to come up with some funding that will work in that direction.
I would like to ask you about current programs CIDA has in the areas of inoculations and/or better nutrition, and how they may be fed into this initiative that we're talking about.
I should say that I had a briefing last night by a doctor from a totally impoverished country. The statistics from that country show that 93% of the population suffer from gonorrhea, and just a hair under 100% suffer from syphilis. The frustration of the indigenous doctor from that country was the fact that particularly the syphilis could be answered by a matter of inoculations and that kind of thing. Indeed, this is the kind of work that Canada is into and that I think all Canadians should be proud of.
I would like to give you an opportunity to give us a very quick idea on inoculations and also in the area of micronutrients, as to where we are going with that at this point.