Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for joining us for this meeting today. The background of this meeting of course is Canada's leadership with G-8 and G-20 this year, which is why you've been invited to speak to us today. And of course I wanted to make reference to the G-8 meeting that just took place a week or so ago in Halifax.
I'm looking at the report of the chair's summary of that meeting in preparation for the upcoming meeting. Canada has chosen goals four and five out of all the goals the G-8 has set. They all have merit. They're all deemed as worthy pursuits for G-8 nations. Canada chose to focus on goals four and five, which were sadly lagging way behind any progress in the other spheres, as laudable as all of the efforts might be. And of course we've been soundly criticized in the process for doing so. It seems to have created a measure of controversy.
I'm reviewing the objectives right out of the G-8 meeting for maternal and child health. These were referred to earlier by Elly Vandenberg, I believe. In your comments you related the goals for women: antenatal care for maternal health; postpartum care; family planning, which includes contraception; reproductive health; treatment and prevention of diseases; prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV; immunization; and nutrition.
In your brief--again, I think it was Ms. Vandenberg--you related to “affordable interventions needed to stop these deaths”. And I heard numbers go by. I guess we've heard these numbers a few times. But we're talking about three million babies who die in the first week of life, nine million children who don't make it to age five, and half a million women who are dying in childbirth-related events that are avoidable. In terms of affordable interventions, one of the things at the top of the list is trained community health workers. We're going on from there to other things like micro-nutrients, breastfeeding, and emergency obstetric care. All of these things have demonstrated results.
But I want to focus on the first one, and that's the issue of skilled health workers. I see, for example in Mali, we have.... CIDA was here the other day. In western Mali, for at least half of the births now, a trained worker is available, if I got that right. But there are different aspects. I heard a little bit of discussion in the comments today about what a trained worker is. In Guatemala we worked with the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, for example, and trained over 700 workers there. And we had some measure of success.
But I think I heard from Ms. Chiesa that a trained worker is not enough; you need a skilled worker. So I don't know that we're talking about having to put obstetricians and gynecologists in the little remote communities everywhere, but I wonder if you would address your perspective on how we address this, what level.... I'm sure any level of training helps, even a midwife--not “even”, I don't mean to put that down, a midwife of some kind. What kind of training, actually, is involved to make this necessary first intervention?