Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your services. Thank you for a wonderfully effective fund in working to contain and perhaps one day eliminate AIDS, TB, and malaria.
I would like to broaden the discussion a little. We are told by Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization that in fact HPV is the greatest and most common sexually transmitted viral infection in the world today, and that approximately three out of four sexually active Canadians, three-quarters of the population, in effect, will be infected by HPV at some point in their life, in many cases with a minor manifestation, but for many more, for a large number of women, cervical cancer, and I have had a brush with the serious cancer that manifests in men.
In Canada we have, since the federal budget of 2009, jump-start funding across the provinces for HPV vaccinations for young girls, grade 7 and up. The provinces are acting on new advice from immunization experts around the world that boys should be immunized as well.
Is there any consideration that the Global Fund, given its effectiveness so far in countering the three original diseases, and given the new knowledge about HPV globally today, might consider broadening its immunization work?