Thank you, Madam.
Members of the Subcommittee on Neurological Disease of the Standing Committee on Health, I am going to speak to you today as a clinician-scientist. My recommendations will pertain both to research and the needs of patients and their families. I have provided you with a copy of my document.
For the past 20 years now in Canada, there has been important progress in the area of patient management. There have been three consensual conferences that brought together the main stakeholders, i.e. the physicians from the various disciplines, and the members of the Alzheimer Society of Canada. The meetings concerned dementia, which is one stage of Alzheimer's disease. If there is another meeting next year, it will not be about dementia, but rather about Alzheimer's disease as a whole. We now feel that we can diagnose the disease before the dementia stage, which opens the door to primary prevention among those who are at risk, and to secondary prevention among people who have premonitory symptoms.
My first recommendation is to encourage research on prevention through targeted initiatives by the institutes, which Dr. Quirion is going to address, and the participation of the Alzheimer Society of Canada, whose representatives you will be meeting next week. There could for instance be a registry of Canadians who would be interested in participating in research on prevention, which would help us to undertake projects at a lower cost, while having a greater number of participants.
Secondly, the development of medication that could help to prevent the disease depends on the Patent Act that is currently in effect. Between the development of these molecules that could help in prevention and their phase III clinical trials, from seven to ten years can elapse. And so the patents that are currently available will practically have expired by then.
At a symposium we took part in in 2007, the Americans mentioned this problem regarding the Patent Act. In Canada and in the United States, if the length of patents that is currently authorized remains the same, this act is going to limit the participation of the pharmaceutical industry in the development of new molecules that require very long trials.
My third recommendation is to consider the possibility of amending the Patent Act or its regulations in order to encourage research on molecules that could help in prevention.
We already have medication available in Canada to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, medication that has been rigorously assessed by Health Canada. Unfortunately, Canadians' access to this medication varies by province because of the coverage in effect in each province. Although the decision to reimburse medication is one that is made by provincial governments, I think that there is social unfairness in Canada due to the fact that medication that is already recognized as effective is not available to everyone everywhere.
For that reason, you could consider the possibility of bringing in a national charter on the rights of patients to have access to recognized treatments. My fourth recommendation is to eliminate differences among the various parts of Canada with regard to access to established treatments. That recommendation however may go beyond the topic of Alzheimer's disease.
My last point, and not the least, concerns the social and individual costs generated by the disease, which Dr. Song referred to. These costs increase as the patient approaches the dementia stage, be it moderate or severe. This has been demonstrated in Canadian studies. There are already tax credits for the diseased individual offered by both levels of government, on the order of $6,000 a year.
For caregivers, for instance the son or daughter of the patient who sometimes stops working for two or three years in order to assist his or her parent, the applicable tax credit is very low. It is on the order of $1,000 per year. You here at the federal level are the only ones who could consider increasing tax credits for caregivers, and also perhaps for the patients in order to help people to keep their relatives at home as long as possible.
Thank you.