Foreign Affairs Committee on June 6th, 2013

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

If I may, we have Canadian companies there that are in the extraction industry. What would be your message to them if they were receiving funding through CIDA to help with conditions? What should they be doing to make sure the miners have better living conditions?

[Dr. Christoph Benn]

We have a very concrete proposal for the mining industry that we do a program together, where we put in, for example, $100 million, and the mining industry itself puts in, let's say, $40 million. We address specifically the TB and HIV problems around the kind of mining communities for the workers, and their families and communities. That way our approach will be very targeted. We hit the disease where it happens, and the companies will see the direct effect of that.

We think this would be a very innovative proposal in a sense. We can match, we can co-invest, if you like, with the industry, so we have the maximum results.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Back to AIDS in the countries, are you working with health departments in some of these countries on dealing with preventing AIDS from happening?

[Dr. Christoph Benn]

Absolutely.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Can you tell me a little bit about it, in one minute?

[Dr. Christoph Benn]

Roughly half of the AIDS resources go into prevention and half go into treatment. Prevention is a very important part. Prevention has to be targeted. In some cases it's education. In some cases now it's male circumcision. That would be something, by the way, for miners as well. Male circumcision is one of the most effective ways to prevent the transmission of HIV. There's counselling and testing, condom promotion. You have to target your interventions, but it can be effective because we can demonstrate how the HIV infection rates have gone down in many different countries.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, gentlemen. We were able to sneak it in between votes, so thank you for your patience on that.

To the committee, thank you very much for helping us get this all wrapped up today.

With that, the committee is adjourned until Tuesday.