Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-06-Speech-3-264"
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"en.20101006.18.3-264"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, thank you for having stayed this far. This report actually responds to a communication from the Commission on global health, but we wanted to adopt an angle that was rather exceptional and concentrate a good deal more on the mutual schemes that are currently thriving in Africa. Allow me to digress a little.
The state of health in Africa is actually quite dreadful, despite all the international aid, and this is due to a large number of factors, whether they be climate change, the financial crisis, war, bad governance in certain countries, or the greed that is provoked by the very riches found in Africa. Add to this the major pandemics such as Aids, malaria, tuberculosis, and so on, and this set of factors means that we find ourselves facing a genuine disaster.
So I must first of all pay tribute to the work of the NGOs and of certain churches too, which are doing a truly remarkable job in emergency conditions, in conflict zones, but this cannot represent a long-term response, it is not a sustainable response.
There are what are called vertical funds, which have been mentioned and which are used to fight major diseases, such as Aids, malaria and tuberculosis, for example. They attract a lot of money and are quite attractive to private aid efforts, since people feel they are giving to a cause that is being kept well under control. In reality, however, these funds too, while certainly achieving their objective, cover only a small part of the problem, because, unfortunately, more deaths are still caused in Africa today by the lack of sanitary infrastructure, the lack of drinking water – children die of dysentery – or the lack of a local dispensary, than, alas, by Aids or malaria.
Hence, the attention that has been drawn to a movement that has been emerging since the 1990s, represented by initiatives consisting of insurance schemes but, above all, of mutual schemes, which have sprung up just about everywhere in different African countries. The objective of these mutual schemes is, of course, to involve people in the management of their own health. Let us not close our eyes: they will not be self-sufficient, they will not succeed in providing all the financing for care or for access to medicines, but in combination with other funds, with other subsidies, they do nonetheless ensure the provision of health care and medication, and on top of that participation, a kind of social dynamic that has taken root.
There are hundreds of them; they exist in various countries and in various sectors. There are women’s mutuals, café owner’s mutuals and so on. The challenge for us, then, is to support this social dynamic, to finance it, and to coordinate it, while at the same time telling ourselves that perhaps one day, it will become self-sufficient, but not yet today.
Therefore, although these mutuals can exist, they can do so only if, of course, there exist alongside them what are called horizontal systems. That is to say, why insure yourself or pay for any episode of ill health, for surgical intervention, if there is no hospital, if there is no doctor, if there is no medication? Therefore, as a corollary, we believe that the European Union should not only support, coordinate and sustain these mutuals, but also lay great stress on horizontal systems, on basic health care, even if it means calling on vertical funds partially to finance this ‘horizontal’ care, this element of basic care that is necessary, that provides the balance that enables the mutuals to exist.
It is that set of problems to which the report refers. I have run out of time but I shall perhaps reply to Members who have some concerns about reproductive health, which is mentioned in this report and is an issue I set great store by."@en1
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