Mr. Speaker, today, November 14, is the first World Diabetes Day observed by the United Nations. It is a day to stimulate activism to address these chronic, incapacitating and costly diseases that pose a serious global health threat, affecting 246 million people worldwide.
Each year another seven million people develop either type 1 or type 2 diabetes and 3.8 million deaths occur from diabetes related causes. Both diseases are increasing in frequency, with type 1 being found in ever younger populations.
I call on our government to make a five year, $125 million commitment for research to find a cure for juvenile diabetes through islet cell transplantation, regenerating the body's own beta cells and finding new therapeutics to predict, prevent and reverse complications. We must ensure that patients also have access to the care they need.
Canada discovered insulin. Our scientists are on the verge of finding a cure. Let us support them and drive juvenile diabetes into extinction.