Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
My name is Alan Bernstein. I am the executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise. Before that, I was the president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and in that capacity I played a role, with a number of people, in actually forging the Canadian HIV vaccine initiative. I remember those days well, back in 2005, and when Mr. Gates came up to sign the memorandum with Mr. Harper. It was done in the spirit of Canada contributing to the global effort to eradicate HIV/AIDS from the planet.
The Enterprise is a voluntary alliance of independent organizations and researchers who are committed to working together to accelerate the global effort to develop an HIV vaccine. The Enterprise was created in recognition of the enormous humanitarian and scientific challenges of HIV/AIDS, and it is held together by two things. First is a shared commitment to stopping this virus and this epidemic, which is undoubtedly the worst epidemic in modern times, certainly, if not in human history. Second, it's held together by a shared scientific strategic plan. I will come back to that.
I would like to talk briefly about three points this morning. First let me just say a few things about the epidemic itself. In 2008, the most recent year for which we have data available from UNAIDS, 2.7 million people were infected with the virus. Of those, only two out of five will ever receive treatment. The other three out of five--the other 60%--will die of the disease of AIDS, which is caused by the virus.
We will not treat our way out of this epidemic. The cost of treating AIDS is going up every year, because 2.7 million people become infected. The largest funder of drugs to treat AIDS is the United States, and President Obama has already indicated that he will plateau the amount of money going to treatment. So I think we can expect that the two out of five will drop within the next few years to one out of five. That means that only 10% to 20% of the people who need drugs will receive drugs in the next few years.
Yesterday, a very important paper was released by Dr. Christopher Murray and his colleagues at the University of Washington. It showed that maternal death due to AIDS is the single largest cause of maternal death on the planet today. About 62,000 women will die of AIDS when they are pregnant, during childbirth, or within a month of giving birth. It's interesting to note, of course, that Canada is hosting this year's G8 meeting, where the theme will be maternal and child health. AIDS is the single largest cause of maternal death.
Let me move on now to Canada's involvement in these global efforts. Canada's involvement in the joint search for dealing with this virus is critical. Canada is one of the world's largest and wealthiest countries. It has an outstanding and strong research community, as you heard from Dr. Fowke, with strong funding and a strong infrastructure for doing research. Canada was affected probably the least of any of the G8 countries by the economic downturn in the last two years. Canada has a strong and proud history of multilateralism, of working together with other countries to develop a search for global problems. It was in that spirit that CHVI, the Canada HIV vaccine initiative, was forged.
How can Canada contribute and align with the strategic plan of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise to eradicate HIV? That plan was forged beginning in 2005, and the signing ceremony, as you've heard, was in 2007.
Since 2005, a lot has changed. I think most recently, and most notably, over the last two years there have been very profound and exciting advances in the science. Dr. Bertozzi talked about the results of the trial in Thailand. That trial was a landmark trial, because for the very first time it showed that a vaccine regimen could provide some degree of protection, about 31%--not durable, but temporary--against HIV. It's not a product, but it is an important proof of the concept that a vaccine is possible.
That result, together with a number of important scientific advances--you've heard from Dr. Fowke about studying exposed uninfected individuals; elite controllers; understanding some of the early immunological events that occur when an individual is infected with HIV. We will soon be starting to hear data teasing apart what happened in the trial in Thailand. Why were those 31% protected for six months to a year? All those are important clues or advances as to how to build on the 31% to get to something closer to 100%, we hope.
As a result of that progress, we need a new strategic plan. The last plan was written in 2005. It's now 2010. I can tell you as head of the enterprise that we are working very hard to put together a new strategic plan that will be coming out sometime later this year. As head of the Enterprise and as a Canadian, I believe Canada has a huge role to play in contributing to the new scientific strategic plan, just as it did in 2005 and 2007. I would remind the committee that the goal here is to develop a vaccine, nothing more, nothing less. It's within our sights.
As we speak, 700 people will get infected with HIV today, and of those, 400 will die of their disease. I'll ask you to keep that in mind as we go forward with this. The world needs Canada to contribute in a big and urgent way to developing an HIV vaccine.