Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-05-Speech-2-076"
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"en.19991005.4.2-076"2
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"Mr President, my thanks to the Commissioner for his statement. In 1998, Commissioner, 530 000 children were infected with the AIDS virus in Sub-Saharan Africa. The startling contrast is that 1 000 children in total were infected by the virus in the whole of Western Europe and North America during that year.
So we have to ask the question: why does such a discrepancy exist Why are there such stark contrasts in terms of the sheer scale of the poverty of people’s lives in Africa and, of course the resulting lack of proper health services, education, and AIDS treatments. Of course, as others have said, the neglect of Africa has very severe economic consequences. These include the suffering and death of productive members of their societies and, very importantly, the diversion of women away from employment towards the role as carers, and the diversion of resources in families and communities from savings to care, and indeed, as I am sure you are aware, to the endless funerals that you can witness in countries like Zimbabwe if you stand on a street corner.
The time has come to invest in programmes that target more effectively the health needs of the people in Africa. It is, of course, ironic, as we mentioned in the Development Committee yesterday, that the Budget Committee voted last week to cut the budget line on reproductive health care and HIV/AIDS work by half from EUR 25 million to 12 million, and that we are now discussing the need for investment in this area. In rich countries, anti-retroviral therapies are extending the lives of significant numbers of people in wealthy nations. But I have to say that these solutions will never be affordable or accessible to the tens of millions of the world’s poorest people.
I welcome the fact that the European Commission is placing increasing emphasis on giving resources to support the development of an AIDS vaccine. Only last week, as I am sure you are aware, the British development minister announced a very large investment in research for that vaccine. Early clinical trials will begin in January 2000 in the United Kingdom, and afterwards in Nairobi. In countries like Zimbabwe where 20% of the population are positive, vaccines, in my view, are the only hope.
Meanwhile, in the short term, women are the key to progress. Adolescent girls in Sub-Saharan Africa are 6 times more likely to be infected than boys of their age. In a recent study in Kenya 25% of girls between 15 and 19 were HIV positive and 4% of boys. Women are literally silenced by ignorance, fear and stigma. Gugu Dlamini announced in a rally in Johannesburg last December that she was HIV positive. A week later, she was beaten to death by neighbours who said that she had brought shame to their community. That kind of situation, President, shames us all."@en1
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