Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-05-Speech-2-077"
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"en.19991005.4.2-077"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the AIDS epidemic in Africa is acquiring increasingly dramatic proportions. The recent conference in Lusaka showed this quite clearly. Every year, two million people die of AIDS and another four million are infected. In total there are today in Africa 25 million people who have contracted AIDS and who are virtually programmed to die. In one tenth of the countries of Africa, life expectancy will not reach 60 or 70 by 2010, as might be expected, and will drop to 40, a rate similar to that we experienced in Europe in the Middle Ages.
This endemic is not just a catastrophe in humanitarian and health terms, it is also a threat to social and economic cohesion and to the demographic balance of the countries of Africa. In Kenya, therefore, 43 of the 50 employees of the tax department who died last year died as a result of AIDS. According to the Farmers’ Union in Zimbabwe, the virus is responsible for a drop in production of 60% for corn and 30% for animal husbandry. In Zambia, if projected figures are substantiated, in 2010 there will be a million fewer children than there are today.
In this situation, how can we accept reducing by one third, in the year 2000, the appropriations allocated to the fight against AIDS in developing countries? How, Commissioner, can we accept that the pharmaceutical companies have a virtual monopoly on manufacturing and distribution? We must re-negotiate the agreements signed on intellectual property. Solutions do exist. The pharmaceutical industry must no longer be content just to calculate its profit margin in relation to its profitability on western markets alone, and must urgently provide poor countries with triple-combination therapy – at cost price too. Right now, it is essential for the countries of the South to have the possibility of producing and obtaining for themselves the necessary medicines.
In a few weeks’ time, in Seattle, the forthcoming WTO negotiations may constitute a significant stage. We must do all we can to ensure that free and anonymous screening centres are set in place. This is an effective means of curbing the disease throughout the world. We must also intensify the use of condoms because, in countries such as Senegal, it is known that condom use has played an important role in the decline of the illness. But how many of us would agree to give half our daily wage for one condom? Because, for a farm worker in the Sahel, a condom costs 150 CFA francs, that is 1.50 Francs, half of his daily wage?
I invite you, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, and you too, Commissioner, to together call upon the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union to create a world fund for medical solidarity. What could be more urgent than to save 25 million people from programmed death?"@en1
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