To answer that question, globally other countries are at a much greater health risk than even Canadians are. I'm going to use a quick case study of hepatitis C.
In the Canadian population, 0.8% are hepatitis C positive. People who are chronic carriers need to be treated, because at the 30- to 35-year mark they will most likely go into liver failure or develop liver cancer, which is very difficult to treat or is incurable in many cases
To bring that home to the Canadian context, the first-line medication that is currently being used, which came out a year and a half ago, is called Harvoni. It costs $24,984 for 28 tablets, and it's a three-month to six-month course of treatment, so the cost per patient just to the Ontario health care system ranges between $75,000 to $150,000.
That's just a start, because for some of the other genotypes that are not treatable by this medication, the new drugs are coming out in the price range of $150,000 per person, so in Ontario alone, this potentially will cost $9 billion to $10 billion for one disease and one drug. Globally, 2% to 3% of the world's population is hepatitis C positive, so this is a very significant public health crisis that's before us nationally and internationally.