Health committee  I'd mention a couple of points. First of all, Canada has traditionally done a lot globally. I think its current level of funding global development is at an all-time low. A growth in global solidarity could be combined with an investment in this area, which I think is important.

Health committee  Yes, you've deduced that correctly from my accent. Indeed I am.

Health committee  With a name like yours, you must have the same heritage. In reverse order, of the countries that are currently investing in TB and drug research and are prominent, one is the U.K. One of the things they have done that is interesting is to create a rule that 3% of the development

Health committee  One thing that triggered me, hearing you, is that in TB we've done this. We have done this for 15 years. One thing you could do is ensure that Parliament is aware of the long time it needs to develop those drugs and develop those new diagnostics. Those processes, because of the w

Health committee  That's an interesting discussion. My colleague from the U.S. will probably go into this. The problem with the extension of IP is that you're going to pay a lot more for this antibiotic when it's being reimbursed through your Canadian health care system. It is an incentive for sur

Health committee  HIV and TB are linked anyway, irrespective of the resistance pattern behind it, because HIV suppresses your immune system. That's exactly the environment where TB thrives, so a suppressed immune system significantly increases the risk of TB. About one-third of the world's populat

Health committee  I'm absolutely no expert by any stretch of the imagination on high-income countries dealing with TB, but domestically one of the things that is very obvious from what I have read is that there is an issue on equity with the northern communities, and then there is an issue of iden

Health committee  Sorry, I didn't get the first part of your question.

Health committee  Globally, it's believed that about one-third of the population on the planet has a latent form of TB. That's obviously significantly lower in high-income countries, because if TB is controlled in a place like Canada, there will be many generations that have now grown up without T

Health committee  First of all, like my predecessor, I'm not a doctor but an administrator at best. There's a difference between multidrug resistant and extensively drug resistant. In the current first-line treatment, if you have regular TB, you treat that with four drugs in a regimen that lasts s

Health committee  I don't know the exact numbers. I know there's a very low percentage of cases of drug-resistant TB in Canada. There are only a handful. However, as I mentioned, given the expense and complexity of treating TB, even a couple of cases—25 cases a year—is an incredible pressure on th

Health committee  Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to speak about antimicrobial resistance and its link to TB, tuberculosis. I'd like to begin with a short summary of that issue globally. TB is the only major drug-resistant infection in existence that is tran