Thank you very much. I'd also like to thank the committee for the opportunity to come and speak about Canada's support to improved health, including access to medicine, in the developing world.
As was mentioned, my name is Louise Clément and I'm with the southern and eastern Africa directorate of CIDA.
The health needs and challenges of developing countries vary greatly. Improving health care, including access to medicines is a multi-faceted challenge, and you will see some of those challenges on slide 1 of your deck. We have to use the most effective, cost efficient, and accountable means to improve the health and the health care of those living in poverty in developing countries.
Through CIDA, Canada is working with the global community to address health needs in developing countries. We are committed to doing so effectively and accountably. We have the lives of millions depending on Canada and our international partners to improve their health and reduce their mortality. Millions are losing their lives from lack of access to medicines that prevent disease and death. This means increasing the medicines available, increasing the access to the right medicines, and ensuring safe delivery and administration of the needed medical interventions.
CIDA's policy is to improve health in the most effective and cost efficient way. To ensure safe delivery and administration of medicines and vaccines, we work with qualified, experienced organizations as partners.
As president of the G-8 in 2010, Canada championed the Muskoka initiative, a major global effort to improve maternal, newborn, and child health in developing countries and to save their lives. Of the Canadian contribution, 80% will go to sub-Saharan Africa, which has the greatest burden of maternal and child mortality.
The Prime Minister recently announced Canada's contribution of $540 million over three years to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. An estimated 45% of Global Fund grants go to procuring health products, including medicines.
Canada is also a founding donor of the global drug facility and has been the single largest donor country for first-line TB drugs since the facility started in 2001. The global drug facility, a program of the Stop TB Partnership, works to improve access, supply, and distribution of TB drugs in developing countries. It is the only global bulk procurer of anti-TB drugs.
Another example is the GAVI Alliance. This global partnership brings stakeholders in immunization, from private and public sectors, together to accelerate access to new and existing vaccines for developing countries. The alliance works to strengthen health systems in countries and to increase the predictability and sustainability of financing for immunization programs.
Yesterday, Canada announced a contribution of $50 million over five years, bringing our total to $238 million in support of alliance efforts to increase access to life-saving vaccines against hepatitis B, yellow fever, rotavirus, and pneumococcal diseases.
Canada has consistently supported measures that would improve the delivery of needed medicines in health care support to achieve healthier populations in developing countries.
Over the past few years, CIDA has taken significant steps to advance its aid effectiveness agenda to deliver real results for those CIDA is mandated to help.
To reduce poverty, a population must be healthy. To learn and be educated, a child must be healthy, and to improve your livelihood, you must be healthy.
We want to ensure that Canada's aid dollars are resulting in more medicine, more access to safe and quality health care, and, in the end, a healthy, thriving world population.
Thank you.