Thank you, David.
Consumer health products have an important role to play in thoughtful health promotion and disease prevention strategies. OTC medicines and natural health products are vital elements in the toolbox Canadians have access to when they practise self-care and engage in the management of their own health.
An ever-increasing body of evidence supports the role that consumer health products play in disease prevention. Nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D have been shown to have a considerable impact on the incidence of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and cancer, and OTC nicotine replacement therapy has shown to be an effective means of reducing tobacco consumption, another major cause of morbidity and mortality.
In Canada we're especially fortunate to have a consumer health product environment in which physicians and pharmacists play an exceptionally important role. There is strong evidence that Canadians avail themselves of the advice of pharmacists in particular to help them select and use consumer health products appropriately to a much higher extent than in other populations. For example, self-care-practising Canadians are three times more likely to rely on the advice of pharmacists in product selection and use than their American counterparts, and are significantly more likely to do so than their European counterparts. This is something Canadians do by choice. It shows that they're eager to use the tools available to them, such as the advice of an available and accessible front-line health care professional, to help them practise responsible self-care.
The Canadian government also has a direct role to play in the role of Health Canada to ensure that the products available to consumers are evidence-based, and that their labelling provides reliable information on which Canadians can base their treatment decisions and usage patterns. So Health Canada, in its regulation of both OTCs and natural health products, has a critical role to play to ensure that Canadians are making decisions about the use of these products that are evidence-based and consistent across all product categories.
Our main purpose today is not to underline the important role that consumer health products themselves play in the health of Canadians and the sustainability of the health care system. Our main purpose is really to highlight the overall importance of self-care more broadly. In this study on health promotion and disease prevention, as in most of the issues the committee explores, self-care plays or can play a critical role in influencing the outcomes in question and the cost at which they are achieved.
At a time when we struggle to get the most out of the $200 billion that is dedicated to providing health to Canadians, it is alarming to think of just how little policy consideration is given to the management of the biggest single resource in our health care system, which is Canadians themselves. That's right. When most of the academics who study these things tell us that between 80% and 90% of the health care interventions are self-care interventions, the system's most valuable resource is in fact the patient.
Allow me to illustrate that point with findings from a study conducted for CHP Canada last year. This study examined the behaviour of Canadians who suffered from three minor ailments: colds, headaches, and heartburn or indigestion. Looking at cold sufferers in particular, we found that of the 7.1 million Canadians who suffered from colds in April 2011, 12%, or 850,000 Canadians, made appointments with their physicians. The annualized cost of those doctor visits and the associated prescriptions and laboratory costs exceeded $1 billion.
We're not suggesting that all of these doctor visits were inappropriate; in fact, they can play a very valuable role in health promotion and disease prevention. But we can take a look at these doctor visits and get a sense of the opportunity they represent by looking at ways of potentially reducing the impact.
We looked at the 16% of those Canadians who went to the doctor, despite reporting mild symptoms from their colds. So it's a fairly arbitrary number. We looked at a target for reducing those doctor visits. If we took 16% of the 12% who went to the doctor and encouraged them to practise self-care instead, we would free up enough family physician access to provide primary care services to 500,000 Canadians. That's 10% of the five million Canadians who currently don't have access to primary care physicians, and of course all of the health promotion and disease prevention opportunities that this represents.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the role that Canadians play in their own health is something that is ignored by this committee or by the other policy bodies that impact the Canadian health care system. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, many of our fellow witnesses in this study have spoken to the importance of promoting healthy lifestyles, including diet and exercise, in order to achieve our health promotion and disease prevention goals. But in the grand scheme of things, what proportion of our health policy discussions take into account the self-care considerations underlying a given issue from the perspective of the everyday Canadians who want to take greater control over their own health?
In this age, exploding with new and ever more accessible sources of information on health, what are we doing to help ordinary Canadians navigate through the maze of sometimes valuable, sometimes misleading, and sometimes downright dangerous sources of guidance on self-care? How do we help them differentiate between the good and the bad, and then integrate and act on critical decisions, on the guidance that is of real value and relevance to them? How do we ensure that the critical decisions and investments being made on health infrastructure, such as electronic health records, are done in a manner that empowers Canadians to make a more meaningful contribution to their own health and well-being?
CHP Canada doesn't have the answers to all of these questions, but we urge the committee to recognize the importance of giving them due consideration in this study and in all of the work that you do. Last year, former deputy minister of health and Bank of Canada governor David Dodge wrote an extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of the future of Canada's health care system in which he urged Canadians to have an adult conversation about the sustainability challenges the system faces. CHP Canada believes that self-care, the decisions and actions that people take to manage their own health, is a vital part of that conversation.
Thank you.