Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-07-11-Speech-3-378"
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"en.20070711.32.3-378"2
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"Imagine going to the doctor’s and, in order to afford treatment, being forced to pay the whole of your family’s annual wage. Imagine going to the doctor’s and being forced to choose between obtaining medicine for yourself and no food for the children, or food for the children and no medicine yourself. That is a choice facing millions of people today. Two years ago I was involved in starting the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative. There were many of us who took the initiative here in Parliament to produce this report, and the cooperation between us has been excellent. We are very much in agreement on these issues. I wish to emphasise to the Commission that Parliament takes a very serious view of the need for rules guaranteeing access to medicines. Today, 12 million people per year die due to lack of medicine, above all that designed to combat tropical diseases. The patients are poor, and it is not profitable to do research on their behalf, so we do not get any new medicines. We therefore have to resolve, firstly, the issue of access to existing medicines and, secondly, that of research into new medicines and the development of these, because these countries will never be able to leave poverty behind if their populations are at home ill. The TRIPS+ agreements must definitely not become incorporated into the economic partnership agreements and undermine these countries’ ability to provide their populations with medicines.
In the period allotted to me in which to speak, I do not even have time to run through all the ways in which the Commission is at present endeavouring to force the inclusion of the various patent-related issues into the negotiations on economic partnerships. We would ask you to stop doing that.
When it comes to research, we need to have a fund at EU level or a global profits tax on pharmaceutical companies. Otherwise, we shall never produce the medicines that can raise these people out of poverty. The right to survival comes before all other rights."@en1
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