Thank you.
I'm very happy to be here today. I have been volunteering in Africa for eight years through our family-focused charity that provides assistance to women and children in Malawi. So far, we have successfully completed more than 15 local sustainable development projects, which were mostly health-oriented.
When I first visited Malawi, in 2003, access to HIV testing was extremely limited. Companies like Abbott provided free screening tests, but administering those tests was always an issue.
Today, fortunately, testing is much more widespread. There are HIV treatment programs in rural areas, and most small hospitals have now set up HIV programs with trained volunteer counsellors, paid counsellors, and are receiving antiretroviral drugs through several NGOs.
Today, the drug supply issue has essentially been solved in many of these countries. Generic HIV drugs are starting to stream in from India and South Africa. Hospitals today are receiving free HIV drugs and free antimalarial drugs through these NGO government partnerships.
In my view, the biggest challenge facing countries like Malawi today is a continuing absence of health care infrastructure. There's only one doctor for 50,000 Malawians and one nurse for 20,000 people. As well intentioned as Bill C-393 may be, it does not address the real challenges, the core issues of poverty, education, nutrition, and access to basic health care faced by less developed countries.
In my view, if Canada were to make a serious contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, here are a few priorities to consider: greater support for prevention of mother-to-child transmission counsellors who go from village to village and counsel and test pregnant mothers; more mobile health clinics to travel to the villages; and how about transportation funds to allow an HIV-positive mother to take that minibus to an ARV clinic that's two days' walk away from where she lives?
Programs to identify HIV-positive children are urgently needed so they can find their way to a treatment program. With 80,000 HIV-positive children in Malawi and only a few hundred in Canada, what could be more important than trying to support the Malawi of tomorrow?
In my view, these are the real needs and these are the practical ways to build a more effective health care infrastructure in countries like Malawi.