Foreign Affairs committee  With regard to what to do with limited resources, I'm taken with the suggestion that Caroline made about also looking at regions and sub-regions. You mentioned Burkina Faso, Mali, these countries in French West Africa. One of the things we do is to say that we have a Sahel-based

Foreign Affairs committee  I do.

Foreign Affairs committee  That's correct.

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a very good question. The situation we face is complex, because some people do consume food, but it just doesn't contain much nutrition, although maybe it contains some of the other macronutrients they need. For those, we do need to fortify the foods if we can. We can for

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, what I can say is that there are a number of efforts—and I believe Canada has been involved with at least one of them—to produce similar products locally at a much lower cost. Often, local production isn't necessarily cheaper, but depending on volumes and market conditions,

Foreign Affairs committee  It's really a question of which ones have the most significant mortality and morbidity impacts and where we see a lot of deficiency in populations. We have worked very closely over the last 20 years with the World Health Organization to characterize populations in which there are

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I hope I understood most of the question. Forgive me if I reply in English.

Foreign Affairs committee  If I understand the question correctly, you're looking at the scope in which we've been able to achieve results, which is spread over really quite a large number of countries. That is because we focus on one key issue. You can imagine a long, thin line across the globe where we c

Foreign Affairs committee  For vitamin A for children, which is a preventive measure as well as a treatment measure, the product cost is around 5¢ per child per year, so that part is extremely cost-effective. The delivery cost ranges according to the conditions. The more distant the population, the higher

Foreign Affairs committee  For vitamin A supplementation, we provide something like 90% of the world's needs for that particular age group, the under-five preschool children.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I have actually seen it with a couple. I've been with the Micronutrient Initiative now for 13 or so years, and I've seen it happen in a couple of cases. The first was in Nicaragua, where we had investments early on in the nineties. They managed to build surveillance systems

Foreign Affairs committee  We have funding from the Department for International Development in the U.K. and from Irish Aid. We've had it from the Gates foundation, other private foundations, the Irish government, and range of others—

Foreign Affairs committee  —in addition to Canada. Thank you.