Foreign Affairs committee  I would also add that indeed one of the major activities that we're undertaking is to try to make the course of treatment much simpler and much shorter. It's not only a question of if a medicine is entirely 100% effective, but that you have to take it for a long period of time, w

Foreign Affairs committee  And MMV is holding its expert scientific advisory committee meeting in Canada next June, to which you are also all invited, if you're interested in finding the Canadian and global experts in this field.

Foreign Affairs committee  Hervé may want to help me with this, but at the moment there is a vaccine in development, known as RTSS. However, recent clinical trials have shown that the vaccine is only partially effective and needs to be given over multiple years in order to be fully effective. There is a

Foreign Affairs committee  Drug development is a very risky business. It costs a lot of money and the financial returns are uncertain. The financial returns are even more uncertain if you're dealing with malaria in endemic countries where you're talking about a very low price per treatment as would be sold

Foreign Affairs committee  The Government of Canada does not currently fund MMV. Hervé was talking specifically about the Global Fund.

Foreign Affairs committee  What we do is we work with partners, which include drug companies, and also includes academic partners and others, to co-develop the drugs. What we're doing is we provide funding, but we also provide guidance, expertise, oversight, and an outlook for the public interest. About ha

Foreign Affairs committee  That is a really excellent question. Enough? I would say it's not enough. One of the ways that MMV in particular is dealing with this is that we've essentially developed what amounts to a mentoring system. We're finding that there are some really excellent laboratories all around

Foreign Affairs committee  The way that we've worked it.... Actually, MMV has shipped compounds to Canada for Canada to test. At MMV, we have an expert scientific advisory committee. It's made up of drug experts from around the world. We have taken that expertise, and as we find compounds that are useful,

Foreign Affairs committee  What's really important is that we're doing it from multiple countries. Canada certainly is engaged in this area, and the United States, the U.K., France. We're also beginning to develop a lot more work with scientists in endemic countries, so South Africa has become quite imp

Foreign Affairs committee  Indeed, one of the problems we are facing is multiple drug resistance. Malaria drugs are delivered in combination in order to prevent resistance from developing. What the world saw the last time it was using single-dose therapies was that resistance developed very quickly. We de

Foreign Affairs committee  “Enough” is an interesting word. Are we paying a lot of attention to it? Yes, indeed. In fact, from the point of view of MMV, we are continuing to spend a significant amount of time on the discovery of new molecules. This is coming out of academia and biotech from around the wo

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Andrea Lucard. I'm an executive vice-president at Medicines for Malaria Venture, otherwise known as MMV, a Swiss foundation that discovers, develops, and delivers effective and affordable medicines f