Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-04-Speech-4-025"
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"en.20011004.2.4-025"2
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"Mr President, as Mr Khanbhai’s report indicates very clearly, five million people die each year basically from these three contagious diseases and ten thousand people die each day in Africa. This seems to me to be a silent genocide that is hardly mentioned in the international press.
It seems to me that some of the proposals in the report are very good, in the sense that these deaths will not be eradicated unless basic health services are available in each one of those countries and unless, as other Members have said, there is access to the treatments, to the medicines which can put an end to these illnesses. At present, they are not available. Therefore, the proposal for a Commission plan and also the proposal that we contribute to an international fund to fight against these diseases seems right to us.
However, I believe that we have to look into the deeper causes. The rapporteur rightly indicates in paragraph 13 of the resolution the fact that demanding structural changes of these countries sometimes prevents them from using sufficient public funds for the health services. It is an infernal vicious circle, because unless there are sufficient resources for these basic health services, for improving the people’s quality of life, for them to have access to housing, food and work, it will be difficult to eradicate these diseases. It is a vicious circle that causes a very large part of the population of the Third World countries to be in this situation.
I believe, Mr President, that prevention, better quality of life for these people, access to medicines and access to a basic health service, as the report proposes, are essential elements for a solution.
The rapporteur also points out very clearly that it is necessary to increase development aid. It is already more than twenty years since the United Nations proposed that 0.7% of the GDP should be allocated to development. Today, only a few Nordic countries in Europe attain that 0.7%. The majority of European countries do not reach 0.7%. Some, like mine, do not give 0.25%. It is deplorable, because this development aid is vital precisely for these populations to be able to access basic health services.
I would like to end, Mr President, by recalling the multiplier effect that the participation of women may have in each of these programmes. As a member of the delegation for relations with the countries of Central America and Mexico, I was involved in projects financed by the European Union and I could see how the participation of native women in that zone had a multiplier effect, because women can help their daughters and their fellow women to learn. Therefore, the participation of women in these plans to eradicate these diseases is fundamental."@en1
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