Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-06-11-Speech-2-072"
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"en.20020611.5.2-072"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the report Mr Nisticò has presented is an excellent one, the content of which I fully endorse. I do not want Mr Lund's statement to give a false impression. There is a need for this directive to achieve uniformity across the Member States in matters affecting the safety and quality of blood and blood plasma. Both in terms of infection and the maintenance of supplies, the protection of patients has the highest priority.
Two things, therefore, must be safeguarded as a matter of fundamental principle: blood quality and the availability of sufficient blood and blood plasma in the European Union. I will go on record as supporting the Council's Common Position, which enhances the safety of blood and blood components and, at the same time, puts us on course to achieve maximum availability of lifesaving drugs.
Plasma is needed in the manufacture of drugs which are essential to life, for example the clotting agents 7 and 8 for haemophiliacs and immunoglobulins to prevent infections in patients with congenital weaknesses of the immune system. Any bottleneck would put many patients' health at risk, something that we as politicians certainly cannot justify. Voluntary and unpaid blood donation is a basic principle and so let it remain. The payment of expenses to plasma donors in the EU cannot, however, be excluded for the future. Almost 50% of the human blood and blood plasma needed in the European Union has to be imported, mainly from the USA.
The directive must not prohibit the import of plasma originating from paid donors either. The EMEA study published at the end of last week clearly shows those blood products from paid and unpaid donors are without doubt equally safe. There is therefore no reason to make unpaid donation mandatory on safety grounds, which would inevitably block supplies even of medicinal products manufactured from blood plasma. This makes Amendments Nos 7, 19 and 20 unacceptable."@en1
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