Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Robinson, we talked briefly about the situation with proton pump inhibitors, common acid-suppressing drugs, that have been clearly linked to a hospital infection called Clostridium difficile. The risk has increased on the order of 40% to 275%.
Now, that information wasn't available when these products were approved, but over 20 years research has been accumulating. It was at least 10 years ago, when the first evidence came out in Montreal, which was considered the epicentre for this new infection, that I started raising questions with then Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh.
In terms of the risk of infection, we now know, through further studies, that people on those medications have not only an increased risk of infection of 40% to 275%; among those infected, they also have an increased risk of the worst complications, about 300%. They also have an increased risk of death, about 500%.
When I asked that question of the Honourable Ujjal Dosanjh in 2005, Health Canada contacted your member companies, four of which produce PPIs, although there may be more by now. The response I got back was that they weren't aware of any connection between their products and hospital infections.
Can you provide any evidence, since I know you're aware of this issue, that any of your member companies actually did any research to establish, voluntarily, whether there was a connection between acid suppression and hospital-based infections? That's 1,400 deaths a year currently; so over 10 years, at least 14,000 Canadians have perished, with hundreds of millions of dollars expended in hospital costs.