Madam Chair, members of the committee, good morning.
It's a pleasure, on behalf of CIHR and president Alain Beaudet, to be here with you to briefly summarize some of the recent funding activity and decisions of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research on research into Alzheimer's disease and related dementia.
To add to what Dr. Song and Dr. Gauthier said, I will give just a few words first on Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease kills. There is no cure for Alzheimer's disease. The treatments we have are not truly effective, and miracles do not occur. Sometimes when you have cancer you have a remission, you have instant recovery. We don't understand it, but it happens. That does not happen with Alzheimer's disease. When you are diagnosed as suffering from Alzheimer's disease, you will die from it seven to 10 years later. It's a long journey, during which your loved ones see you and your personality disappear in front of their eyes. Even if you are still physically fit, it's a hard and long journey for the patient and for all the loved ones. Today, half a million Canadians live with Alzheimer's disease. It's the seventh-leading cause of death in Canada, and these numbers are increasing daily. Dr. Song mentioned there's a new case every 71 seconds.
Economically it costs society billions of dollars a year, and socially it's probably even more staggering in cost. In our view the solution is research. It offers hope for a better tomorrow and a better outcome. We are most fortunate that Canadian scientists and clinicians are recognized as being world leaders in the field of Alzheimer's disease research.
Research in Alzheimer's disease is a priority for CIHR. We are investing more than $30 million per year in our regular program, such as investigator-initiated grants, salary awards, and targeted team grants. CIHR, via its institute of aging, is the main funder--to the tune of $30 million--of a very ambitious Canadian longitudinal study on aging. It's a program that will follow a cohort of Canadians 45 and older over the next 20 years. Data from the cohort should prove most useful in informing us on successful aging--why some people age well, and why others do not age so well and develop Alzheimer's disease. We also support the Canadian Dementia Knowledge Translation Network, which aims to ensure that best practices are used in the treatment of persons suffering from Alzheimer's disease and related dementia.
This is clearly not enough, considering the size of the challenge. Accordingly, CIHR decided to make research on Alzheimer's disease one of its main priorities, with an additional investment of $25 million. This money is used to develop what is known as the international collaborative research strategy for Alzheimer's disease, with the aim of accelerating discovery by partnering with the Alzheimer Society of Canada and the very best teams throughout the world. Partnership is key, and in Canada we have an excellent but small community, so we need to partner worldwide to come up a solution.
The focus of our initiative is on prevention, early diagnosis, and early treatment of Alzheimer's disease. We believe that is where our investment will have the greatest impact and lead to the development of a truly effective treatment and even, hopefully, the prevention of some forms of Alzheimer's disease.
To date we have established partnerships with funders and scientists in France, in partnership with Quebec; a network including the U.K., Germany, Italy, Ireland, Belgium; China; and the United States. We are also hoping to develop a network of experts platform, such as genomics, epigenetics imaging, animal model, brain banking, clinical trial neuropsychology, and services in research and population health. We hope to develop that network of experts platform throughout Canada in the coming year. This will allow our Canadian experts to be able to partner at the international level with colleagues throughout the world.
But again, this is not enough compared to other countries that have made massive investments in the field of Alzheimer's disease research. These include the United States of America, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and now many others.
So we need a large increase in funding in future years. We are confident that with increased support, our experts will deliver and discover ways to combat this formidable enemy known as Alzheimer's disease.
I have one recommendation for the committee today: that a significant targeted budget be provided to CIHR to fully implement our international strategy for research on Alzheimer's disease.
Thank you very much.