Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-03-Speech-3-279"
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"en.20030903.11.3-279"2
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"Mr President, I would first like to say thank you to my colleague, Mr John Bowis, for his work. He has taken all aspects of human health into consideration impartially.
It is opportune that we should be speaking about the health situation in the developing countries and access to clean water in the same sitting. You cannot just daydream about good health if people are denied their basic right to clean water. Clean water, functional sanitation and good hygiene are the foundations on which healthcare is built. Every year three million people die of infectious diseases transmitted through polluted water.
Health and poverty reduction is a subject where almost everything has already been said. There is no lack of information from us. I do not intend now, therefore, to churn out more tragic figures and statistics before Parliament. I would prefer to tell you briefly why I decided some time ago to stand for the European Parliament. When I was asked to stand I had serious doubts about the reasons, which I shall not go into here. However, while I was thinking over what my decision should be I was on a working trip to El Salvador and Mexico. I was working for a development cooperation organisation examining the tracks of the hurricane that had raged in the autumn of 1998 and familiarising myself with the situation regarding AIDS patients and conditions in the slums. I met a mother of small children who had been infected with HIV by her partner and now it had been detected in her newborn child too. I encountered a lot more examples of wretched human destiny: small people crushed by enormous problems. Then I began to think: what if the politicians who decide these people’s affairs and fate for them have never met them in the flesh? What, furthermore, if they do not understand the issues they are taking decisions about? Supposing they do not even see the people through the statistics? They are, after all, real people, not zombies. They have a pain threshold.
I made the decision to go into politics for these people’s sakes. Many a time I ask myself if my efforts are visible anywhere or sufficiently visible, and I cannot bring myself to answer the question. I think that if it does not result in any practical decision being made, or a gesture made for better things to come, or a hunger for justice, which has concrete results, I do not have the right to call myself a politician."@en1
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