Thank you for the question.
Yes, there are women who took mefloquine during their careers, for sure. I don't have the data on women specifically. Many of our men in uniform obviously took mefloquine as well.
A significant large study was done for our military members about mefloquine several years ago, informing what needed to be done from that perspective. It was reported to my predecessor, the surgeon general. Obviously that study was aligned with evidence in the research community—both Canadian evidence and international evidence. There have been many research activities all around the world on mefloquine.
Based on that evidence, a recommendation was made to basically put mefloquine as a last-resort choice, as you mentioned, because of some potential impacts of mefloquine on the brain. This hasn't been officially proven. There is still a lot of debate in the scientific community about that, but to be prudent, we have decided to basically make it a last resort.
Why is it still in the formulary? It is because for some people it's well tolerated and they have done well with it. The beauty of mefloquine is that you take it once a week instead of every day, so compliance is much better. Having said that, we keep monitoring the corps of members who have taken mefloquine over their careers and we're—