Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-18-Speech-4-020"
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"en.20031218.1.4-020"2
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"Mr President, I would also like to welcome my constituent, Louise McVay, from Loughborough in the East Midlands, who is in the gallery. She has been a tireless campaigner for MS sufferers and I commend her courage and her hard work. I would also like to thank Mrs Aaltonen for her excellent work on this report. MS is the most common form of disability affecting young adults in the EU, and two-thirds of sufferers are women. Of the 400 000 sufferers in the EU, 85 000 are in my own country, the United Kingdom. MS demands our attention.
This report proposes the very best kind of European cooperation. It recognises that the EU has no competence to determine the health policies of Member States, still less to set their budgets or spending priorities for Member States' health services. That is as it should be. What the EU can and should do is to offer the exchange of best practice, to benchmark performance, to encourage uniformly high standards of care. It has another vital role and that is in the area of medical research. As spokesman for my Conservative delegation on research, I share the view of Ms Lynne that we should like to see chronic diseases more strongly prioritised in the EU's framework research programmes.
While it is fashionable to concentrate on newly emerging diseases, we cannot afford to lose sight of familiar problems which affect huge numbers of patients. We still do not have a full understanding of the causes of MS and we should not rest until this problem is solved.
Certainly we have much to do in my own country, the UK. Our Labour Government has failed to address the problem of the postcode lottery, which means that the levels of care and availability of drugs can vary from street to street. I was first alerted to this problem for MS sufferers in the UK during our 2001 general election campaign when one of our Conservative candidates was approached by a young lady in Nottingham, Mrs Peel, who had just been diagnosed with the disease. Mrs Peel, who was pregnant at the time, was alarmed to find that she was being denied therapies and treatment by the local health authority simply because of where she lived. I was very pleased that the Conservative spokesman on health at that time, Dr Liam Fox, was able to visit Mrs Peel personally to listen to her case.
I would also like to commend the European MS Platform for their campaigning work. I was glad to support their European MS Awareness Day in the European Parliament in Brussels in June of last year. Such events are invaluable in briefing Members on the issues surrounding the disease and the problems faced by sufferers.
As we come to the end of the European Year of People with Disabilities, we must focus on the needs of MS patients and the research-based opportunities to accelerate the development of more effective treatments."@en1
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