Health committee  We've been creating a suicide prevention framework and that should be released relatively shortly as part of the broader picture from the agency's perspective. We have a fair bit of work as well that's going on in mental health directly.

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  That's a regulatory issue that I would pass to Health Canada.

Health committee  Luckily, we've never had a case in Canada. In West Africa, in Guinea, there's an outbreak currently. It's very small. I think there are about nine or 10 cases. There are three cases in Liberia. This is a little worrisome in that it's not totally eliminated, but I think a lot of experts predicted that we'd have this sort of new reality in terms of Ebola.

Health committee  I can speak to that. Smallpox is not vaccinated for at all. Smallpox, as you may know, has been eliminated from the globe. There are certainly some stores of smallpox in some labs; I believe the U.S. has it. There's a potential for smallpox to be used as a bioweapon. What we're using and keeping in our stockpile is vaccines against smallpox.

Health committee  It's to keep our supply up. Smallpox is interesting. There's a first-generation smallpox vaccine, which is good for everybody; about 3% of the population is not able to take that. We also have a smallpox immunoglobulin for folks who get exposed, and then a third-generation vaccine.

Health committee  Yes, it is.

Health committee  Anthrax is a little different. It's a bacteria. Yes, it still could be a bioterrorism threat, so we keep a couple of antibiotics for anthrax in the stockpile, and we're looking to purchase some vaccination for anthrax as well. If you have an exposure to anthrax, we would selectively treat those people closest to the exposure with antibiotics, potentially, and vaccinate around them.

Health committee  Perhaps I can talk a bit about concussions. Some of the work on concussions is toward research, so I'll let Alain talk about that in a second. We have some resources that came with the current budget, and we'll be focusing on standards so people can understand treatment and how to recognize a concussion, basically best practices that we're going to disseminate to various groups, Sport Canada, etc.

Health committee  Just that it's extremely important from a public health perspective, obviously, because of the distance, and the agency would be able to play a supportive role.

Health committee  Speaking from the agency's perspective, let me say that we don't have a contingency fund. I'm quite jealous. It would be nice to have that sort of fund. We are looking. It's a hard question to answer, because we don't know what the future holds in the next little while. Right now our focus is on research and diagnostics at the laboratory and how we can assist with the potential vaccine.

Health committee  I'd like to echo Dr. Sher's comments. This is a great opportunity to speak to you and to have media present to speak to Canadians and reassure them that for the vast majority of Canadians this is a very low risk. The message I'd like to leave you with is, again, that this is not going to be the last one and wasn't the first.

Health committee  There's no mandatory testing at this point in time. There are just the two tests that Matt has described, both looking for the virus in the blood or looking for antibodies toward the virus.

Health committee  A test during the two-month period? The test could be done on the male. That's the concern, the male having that, and I assume semen could be tested. They'd have to submit that specimen and be tested, or serology in the male could be done.

Health committee  Absolutely. You would expect that most of them, as I mentioned, either have no symptoms or very mild symptoms. We've detected 20, but we're not testing the vast majority of Canadians who go. I would suspect that a lot more than 20 Canadians have been infected with Zika, but either they have no symptoms, or it's self-limited and they're fine.