Okay. Thank you.
As I said, I'm Kenyan...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...in Kenya and in Canada. I'm currently the clinical director for the Kenya AIDS control project, which is co-managed by the University of Nairobi and the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
My interest with the bill is because I'm taking care of Kenyans who have HIV and AIDS. Kenya has a population of about 38.5 million, with 1.4 million living with HIV and AIDS. Currently, 406,000 are on the antiretrovirals, but this wouldn't be possible were it not for the generics.
If I go back in time, only 1,000 Kenyans were on antiretrovirals by 2001 when the big pharma were selling the antiretroviral drugs. By 2005, only 10,000 were on antiretrovirals. But something changed in 2005, when we started accessing generics from all over the world--from Brazil, from India--through PEPFAR, the presidential emergency plan for AIDS relief in Africa. We currently have 406,000 Kenyans living with HIV/AIDS on antiretrovirals, and that's a big jump. If it were not for those generics, the majority of these Kenyans would be dead.
In 2010 we changed the...[Technical difficulty--Editor...antiretroviral program to 350. This pushed the number of Kenyans who might go on antiretrovirals to about 610,000. This will require funding from some source. Currently, about 65% are funded by PEPFAR, and the rest are funded from other sources--global funds, pension funds, and Kenyans. But it's all generics.
With the previous association between Kenya and Canada, I think the only thing we need to get from Canada is generics. I know that somebody has said that generics can come from anywhere, but maybe the good people from Canada could invest in this, because with the increase in individuals on antiretrovirals for long periods, we expect a bigger number to become resistant, and not all antiretroviral drugs are in generic forms.