Mr. Speaker, today is World Health Day. Every day, 40,000 children perish and 1,500 women die in childbirth. In Africa, one child in six dies before turning five years old.
The number of people who will die of AIDS will be in excess of 200 million. Two million people die every year from malaria and an equivalent number die from tuberculosis. This is shocking, considering that most of these deaths are preventable, manageable or treatable.
Here at home the number of people with dementia and other chronic diseases is escalating, and childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions.
None of these challenges were mentioned in the Speech from the Throne.
Simple measures and simple interventions properly implemented and coordinated with a long term view to capacity building would save millions of lives.
The new government should recognize that the world has more than five priorities. The massive challenges to global health must be one of the government's top priorities.