Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-05-Speech-2-067"
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"en.19991005.4.2-067"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, in fact the problem cannot be taken seriously enough. AIDS is threatening to become a health catastrophe on an unimaginable scale, particularly in the countries of Africa south of the Sahara. Children are affected above all. According to an estimate by UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation, 7 out of every 10 people newly infected with the HIV virus live in this region. In the case of children under 15 years of age, the figure is as many as 9 out of 10. Approximately 83% of deaths from AIDS take place here, and at least 95% of all children orphaned by AIDS are African boys and girls in this region. Of the 34 million people infected since the epidemic appeared in this part of Africa, 11.5 million have already died, a quarter of them children.
At the same time, reference has been made to the fact that all the successes there have been in terms of increasing life expectancy have been reduced to nothing. In many countries, life expectancy has even fallen again to the level recorded in the 1960s. To put it another way: a child who is born today in an African country badly affected by AIDS has an average life expectancy of only 43 years. Without AIDS, it could have been 60 years.
The situation in Eastern and Southern Africa is particularly dramatic. In Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, a fifth of the adult population is infected or ill with AIDS. This dreadful situation could continue indefinitely. However, AIDS is no inevitable fate. A number of countries such as Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda committed themselves early on to prevention, and with success. It is high time that, where the politics of health are concerned, the emergency brake was put on throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and also in other affected parts of the world. Social, political and religious taboos have no place here. They must be cleared away; how and by whom is immaterial.
Trivialising AIDS and making it taboo are a direct route to catastrophe. The partnership, AIDS against AIDS in Africa, founded at the Lusaka Conference, deserves firm support from the European Union, both in material terms and in terms of visionary perspective. Civilian society, including the private sector, together with representatives of governments, international aid organisations and non-governmental organisations of various kinds have come together in order to declare war on the epidemic. They have undertaken to launch comprehensive AIDS or, rather, anti-AIDS programmes in all African States. One of the ambitious goals of these programmes is to achieve a 25% reduction in the number of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 newly infected by AIDS, and this by the year 2005 in the most badly affected countries and by the year 2010 in all countries. These efforts can and must be supplemented by the European Union and, above all, vigorously supported through cooperation with the ACP countries.
In fact, the European Union has not been inactive to date. Between 1987 and 1997, almost 200 million ecus or euros were spent on HIV/AIDS programmes in more than 90 developing countries. This fact should be expressly recognised. To this will be added, over the next three years, a further EUR 45 million in the context of a special budget strand for developing countries in regions around the world, together with EUR 20 million for a regional 5-year programme for the ACP countries and additional funds in the context of specific programmes such as those for the ACP countries. These figures do not include, for example, research programmes or co-financing by non-governmental organisations.
More than in Europe, it is young girls who are especially at risk in Africa. Nowhere are there more teenage mothers and nowhere do they give birth to a larger number of infected babies.
The main effort must therefore be to educate young people. This is a task which must be carried out in schools. The education campaigns and condom advertising in Tanzania and Uganda have shown that success is possible. Above all, the radio must be employed as a means of information to reach everybody. Here too, specific measures of support are absolutely necessary. Joint efforts in a spirit of partnership are the right path to go down. But if these are to be effective, more rather than less resources are needed and, in this regard, I am anxious about the Commission’s, as well as this Chamber’s, financial policy. Mrs Maij-Weggen, I hope that your group will help ensure that the decisions of the Committee on Budgets that I have heard about will be revoked or altered in the plenary sitting, while any watering down of the proposals tabled by the Committee on Development will be reversed. We must together ensure that whatever it is that we want can also be financed."@en1
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