Madam Speaker, I am up tonight in relation to a question I asked the Minister of Health in the House in December 1999, just a few short months ago. It was on the drug approval process, the very cumbersome time delayed process that we have in the country. In that question for the minister I was talking specifically of a cancer drug called Rituxan, which has been approved in 40 other countries of the world but not yet in Canada.
In my hand I have a number of letters supporting the approval process of this drug. We have patients in Canada who could use the drug at this very moment, but it is not available to them simply because of the very cumbersome time delay that the drug approval process has to go through at Health Canada.
The drug in question, Rituxan, is what we call an immunotherapeutic monoclonal antibody which has a unique ability to bind itself to cancer cells without the toxic effects that are often associated with other cancer treating drugs.
What is so disturbing about this process is that other countries have had this drug for the last couple of years. I want to go through the 40 some countries that I mentioned previously. Some of the countries that presently have the drug are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.S. In total 40 countries can now use this drug to treat patients with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
The argument could be that we can get the drug under special warrant in Canada, which is absolutely true, but that is a very cumbersome process and a very expensive one. Until that drug is approved by Health Canada no insurance company will cover the its cost. Nor will any health jurisdiction in the country cover it through the medicare system in Canada. In other words, the drug is denied simply because it is not approved. We have to improve upon that process.
We always have to exercise caution in the approval of any drug, but we are talking about a drug that was approved in 40 other jurisdictions. I want to give the minister credit as well because I did speak to him on this privately outside the Chamber in addition to the question that I asked and he has paid some special attention to it.
The information I am now receiving from Health Canada—and we have to be very careful on this because there is no way of saying for sure that this is going to happen—indicates that probably within the next couple of weeks this drug will be approved. I hope this is the case. I am going to give the minister credit for speeding this process along.
The problem is we have to come up with a better way of doing it, realizing that safety always has to be paramount. I want to suggest that we take a very close look at the—