Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My questions relate to drug resistance, particularly tuberculosis and malaria drugs.
There is a high resistance in Africa to chloroquine in the case of Plasmodium falciparum, which is the most fatal. There are some problems concerning the drugs. A lot of fake drugs are on the market. There is also the fact that people don't take them for the full course the treatment. And increasingly, foreign workers, including Canadians, go to work in Africa and don't take their preventive medicine because they don't want to experience the side-effects. These factors can contribute to this resistance.
There's another problem. The creation of new drugs to fight these diseases will not be profitable commercially because the target clientele would not be able to buy patented or more effective drugs. Having said that, there is very little research being done to develop new drugs.
Take tuberculosis, for instance. Treatment lasts six months. It is difficult to make sure that individuals will take the full course of drugs during that period and won't stop taking them to, say, give half to their sick child.
How does the global fund deal with resistance and the lack of research to create new drugs, particularly those for treating tuberculosis and malaria?