Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I work with CIDA's policy branch as a health and HIV/AIDS adviser. It's a great pleasure to be here. My presentation will actually be quite brief. I'm just going to give you a bit of an overview of the status of health in developing countries, present to you some of the challenges facing developing countries with respect to access to medicines, and give you some examples of what we're trying to do through CIDA in supporting developing countries in the area of health.
As I mentioned, it will be quite brief, but I'm obviously open and willing to answer questions and provide further information if you need it.
In my presentation, I will be speaking to a deck. It's the blue one that I hope everyone has in front of them. On the second slide, “Canada's International Commitments in Health”, my colleague Doug George spoke about some of our international commitments, so I won't repeat what he has already said.
With respect to that, I would draw your attention to the millennium development goals that were adopted in 2000, to which Canada is a party. Essentially, they provide the framework for how we work in development, the goals towards which developing countries are striving and the goals to which we as a donor provide support to them.
With respect to health, four of the eight millennium development goals relate directly to health. One is to reduce child mortality. Another is to improve maternal health. The last one that specifically relates to health is to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
The next slide, concerning health in the developing world, is just to give you a sense of some of the issues that face developing countries with respect to health. It by no means paints the full picture of health, but I thought some of these statistics might be compelling to you.
If you look at issues of maternal and child health, which relate directly to the millennium development goals of which I spoke to you before, it is estimated by the UN that 99% of maternal deaths due to pregnancy or childbirth and over 90% of child deaths—which is a staggering 11 million deaths per year—occur in the developing world.
Malaria is another example, which accounts for an estimated 1.2 million deaths per year, and approximately one million of those occur in Africa alone. So you can see where the burden is greatest.
With respect to HIV and AIDS, an area specifically in which I spend a great deal of time working, of the 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS, estimated by UNAIDS, over 90% are in the developing world. There are still an estimated 3 million deaths per year related to HIV and AIDS, and just under 5 million new infections continue to occur around the world. Of the estimated 6.8 million people around the world or particularly in the developing world who could benefit from antiretroviral treatment, 1.6 million are estimated to be currently receiving treatment. That's a huge increase over the last number of years, but it has obviously still not achieved that goal that Doug George spoke about, which is universal access.
The next slide deals with some of the challenges that developing countries face with respect to access to medicines. Again, these are just a few examples. It's a complicated issue to which there are many challenges, but just to give you a sense of some of them, and some of the non-TRIPS-related issues as well, certainly weak health systems continue to confront African countries and other countries in the developing world. As an example, Africa has only 1.3% of the world's human resources for health, yet it carries about 25% of the burden of global disease. If you look at sub-Saharan Africa, it's estimated that only about 30% of the population has access to basic health services.
Some of the more specific issues related to access to medicines, issues of capacity in developing countries around procurement and regulatory issues and supply chain, continue to challenge developing countries. These are all things the development community, including CIDA, is working with developing countries to address.
The second point there is lack of ability to use TRIPS flexibilities. This is related to issues of capacity and legislative frameworks within developing countries themselves, whether or not they have the knowledge of the flexibilities or the people who need to have the specific knowledge as to what's available to them through the TRIPS flexibilities and whether or not the right legislation exists in those countries in the way that we've undertaken in Canada to put in place compulsory licensing provisions in our legislation. Does that exist in those developing countries? In many instances, it doesn't.
The final challenge is the one you often hear about, of course, and that's the funding gap. What are the available resources? Just to give you some estimates and examples, it's estimated that in order to achieve the goal of halving the burden of malaria by 2010, an estimated $3 billion will be needed. Currently, about $600 million is being spent. On HIV/AIDS, if you look at the UN AIDS estimates for 2007, it's estimated that about $18 billion will be required annually. That's for all of HIV/AIDS, and not specific to treatment. It's estimated that between about $8 billion and $10 billion is being provided, both through donors and through developing countries' budgets themselves.
On the next slide is a quick overview of the health priorities at CIDA and how we work with developing countries to improve their health outcomes. These items are categorized into two areas, really. The first area is stepping up our efforts to prevent and control high-burden and poverty-linked diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria. We're also working on issues of infant and child health and sexual and reproductive health, including maternal health. Finally, there are the issues of food security and nutrition. And the second area is strengthening health systems. As you remember, I just mentioned that this is a very important issue with respect to access to medicines.
Finally, on the last slide, just to give you a quick overview of what we're doing—and again, this is illustrative, not complete—for the fiscal year 2006-07, which has just come to an end, it's estimated that we will have spent about $822 million specifically on health sector support in the developing world. That's approximately 30% of CIDA's overall sectoral spending.
If we have a few minutes, Mr. Chair, I'd just like to give you some examples of some of the programming we do. I'm sure many of you are aware of the global fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria. Canada is a significant donor. I believe we're currently the seventh-largest donor to that fund; we recently announced the provision of $250 million over two years to the global fund. The fund is doing tremendous work in terms of providing access to medicines in the developing world, and it will continue to do so. Canada will continue to participate in it, I'm certain.
We've provided support to the WHO, particularly for its work in access to HIV/AIDS treatments. When I spoke earlier about how 1.6 million people are now accessing treatment, that was in large part due to some of the very good work of the WHO's HIV/AIDS division, to which Canada was a leading donor.
We've announced recently that we will spend, over the next two years, $450 million to invest in African health systems initiatives. We provide support to ministries of health on HIV/AIDS strategies throughout Africa and around the world. Mozambique and Tanzania are two specific examples.
I've provided an example of a small initiative in terms of money, but one that we think is quite important with respect to this particular issue. I won't go into it in detail, because I believe you're hearing from U of T later this week on the access to drugs initiative. It's essentially support that we've provided to U of T to work with the Government of Ghana, to assist it in making use of the TRIPS flexibilities. Some new work that the U of T is doing is also looking at regional approaches to access to medicine.
Finally, the last one is the global TB drug facility, to which Canada was a founding donor and has provided significant funding. To date, it has provided treatment to over 6 million TB patients. Our support to that has been about $90 million to date.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.