Thank you very much, Mr. Tilson, for your question.
I think there are two key areas where there has been significant progress made. One is in the area of preparedness for infectious disease emergencies, specifically a pandemic preparedness. There was a million dollars invested in 2006, and considerable progress has been made not only with the development of our Canadian pandemic plan, but also as components of that progress on a pandemic vaccine strategy, which will enable all Canadians to have access to a pandemic vaccine as quickly as possible in the event of a pandemic.
In May 2006 there was a federal-provincial--territorial health ministerial agreement to achieve a stockpile for early treatment with anti-viral drugs in the event of a pandemic--a 55-million-dose target--and we have achieved 53 million doses within that stockpile. We are only two million doses short because we have not yet determined what pediatric formulation of drug would be optimal for that stockpile.
Additionally, I think the area of health human resource capacity has also been addressed through pandemic funding, particularly in public health. I want to talk about the fact that we do have 23 federal health workers supporting surveillance and outbreak investigation in provinces and territories right now, and through the pandemic funding that was allocated in 2006, we will be achieving approximately 53 full-time equivalents in provinces and territories to support public health capacity development, which I think is really very important.
I also would like to talk a bit more about our international contributions as well as pandemic planning. We all know that pandemics are in fact by definition a global event. We've contributed $106 million to international pandemic preparedness, and we certainly have been recognized by the WHO as a global leader in pandemic planning. I think it's something we all need to be very proud of.
On another note, I'd like to talk about immunization because we know that immunization is among the most cost-effective and effective strategies for improving health in the population.