Evidence of meeting #39 for Health in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vaccines.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
Yes, we've been working for many years, right from 2001 or even before that, with the Public Health Agencies and with the provinces. This is not new. The idea that a pandemic was going to come sometime was well known. So there has been preparation all along.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tim Uppal Conservative Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB
That's very good. Thank you.
Dr. Butler-Jones, I notice that you made public the pandemic preparedness kits last week. What are your plans to ensure that they're received by Canadians across the country?
4:50 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
There's a range of distribution methods available. All the ads talk about where people can get that information and how they can get it. They don't have to go to the website themselves. They can phone the number and have the information mailed out to them.
We're taking the advice of communications experts. I'm not an expert on that; I know how to talk, but I wouldn't claim to be a communications expert. We've been following their advice as to timing to get things out so that people have and retain the information they need at the point when they need to make decisions. Before having the vaccine, it was important to know about coughing into sleeves, avoiding other people, and so on. That's been the focus of the messaging.
As I think I've said before the committee before, people tell me that they can tell the Canadians in international airports, because they sneeze or cough into their sleeves, whereas that's not true elsewhere. In fact, the British and others have asked us for our materials and what we've been using so they can modify it. We're learning from each other as we go.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tim Uppal Conservative Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB
I was very interested to hear that Australia has already gone through its flu season. What have we learned from Australia?
4:50 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
There are a few things, not just from Australia but from other countries in the southern hemisphere. Their first wave coincided, essentially, with their normal flu season. They saw a real burden on their ICUs, for example. They saw a similar pattern of disease. In other words, there was a large percentage of disease in the very young and there was the impact that has. We've not seen a change in the virus yet. Influenza is unpredictable. We don't know when the virus might mutate into a slightly different strain. Again, that's one of the reasons we have an adjuvanted vaccine, primarily, in Canada that potentially can protect against changes in the virus itself.
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
On the issue of the virus changing, mutating, changes have been detected recently in the Netherlands, but they're not affecting the antigenicity at the moment. The vaccine is working okay, but I think things are moving in the virus. We don't know where it will take us. Maybe it won't change too much, but they're already detecting some changes in the virus.
4:50 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
I do apologize. I suspect I will be back.
I thank you all for your questions and participation.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Thank you for being here.
Please continue. You have about 45 seconds.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Tim Uppal Conservative Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB
There has been some controversy with respect to the seasonal flu shot. Do you advise people to get it before or after the H1N1 shot?
4:55 p.m.
Director General, Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
There are no data to say that you shouldn't have it. The idea would be that if you're going to have it at the same time, have it on different arms. There's no real data to say that you shouldn't have it at the same time.
4:55 p.m.
Director General, Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
Yes, you can get both.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
October 26th, 2009 / 4:55 p.m.
Bloc
Nicolas Dufour Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I thank all the witnesses for having come here today.
I found what Mr. Oliphant was saying just now extremely interesting regarding the interest in the vaccine and the advertising campaign. We heard a lot about the very good work done by Health Canada—there is no doubt about that—but at the same time, we see that people are very reluctant to get the vaccine. I must say that I participated in several activities in my riding during the weekend and many people are still afraid of getting vaccinated.
Each side has its arguments, and we hear contradictory arguments from health professionals who do not exactly agree on the vaccine as such and on the need for vaccination. Ms. Fletcher mentioned this a while ago.
I would like to know, Mr. Lucas, how to answer that question and what you think of Ms. Fletcher's arguments with regard to vaccination.
4:55 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, GlaxoSmithKline Canada
First of all, I can say that I'm going to get vaccinated. As Dr. Butler-Jones explained, the benefits far outweigh the theoretical risks of getting vaccinated. I'm not a physician, so it would probably not be appropriate for me to take that answer any further.
Perhaps Dr. Griffiths could comment.
4:55 p.m.
Director General, Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health
I think there's no question of the benefits of immunization here in relation to the risks. Regarding the risks of a pandemic influenza, we don't know how it's going to develop. At the moment it's been fairly quiet in the first round. The second round could be much worse. We don't know how it's going to go.
It's a very unpredictable virus that's coming. We do know that it's not behaving like seasonal flu virus. People think it's just like the seasonal flu. In humans it's actually affecting deep in the lungs, in younger people. This has been mimicked, incidentally, for those of you who are interested in models. The ferret is the model for flu. It's doing the same thing in ferrets. This virus damages the lungs considerably. It's a nasty virus. We don't know why it's behaving this way.
This is the problem. We're really seeing a virus evolving, and we don't know which way it's going to go. Yes, the benefits far outweigh the risks here.
To your point from earlier about people forgetting, nowadays we don't have diphtheria or tuberculosis. I gave a talk six or seven months ago to a public audience, and I started my talk by showing a picture of my grandfather and a photograph of my aunt, my mother's sister. I never knew either of them. My grandfather died of tuberculosis before I was born, and my aunt died of diphtheria. You don't hear of that so much now.
We were talking about polio earlier on. Somebody in the audience came out and said they were working on polio with Connaught, which is quite interesting. People forget that these diseases do have devastating effects on communities when they roll out. They're preventable diseases.
I think when you roll out with large populations of millions, there will be some instances where somebody thinks the vaccine has caused some damage, an allergy or something. It's very important to investigate those and make sure they're not causally related. It may be embarrassing, but we need to know. It's all planned that we look at these things and build up the confidence as we roll out.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
4:55 p.m.
Researcher and Board Member, Vaccination Risk Awareness Network Inc.
I didn't know that.
5 p.m.
Researcher and Board Member, Vaccination Risk Awareness Network Inc.
I'll talk to you about Dr. Girard's paper, which I have added to this. Dr. Mark Girard is a drug monitoring expert. He talks about the seasonal flu in Canada. Over the years FluWatch has shown that only about 10% of all virus samples submitted were actually influenza. Did you know that? That's for the seasonal flu.
On page 11 of Mark's article he says:
Here is the appalling illogicality of vaccine development: whereas these drugs are supposed to exert their beneficial immunological effects on a very long term, they are never conscientiously suspected (and, in any case, never conscientiously assessed) regarding their potential to exert adverse immunological effects within the same long term.
5 p.m.
Conservative