Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-13-Speech-3-213"
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"en.20010613.7.3-213"2
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". – It is very true that not only is this a human tragedy, it is also an economic disaster, the mathematics of which are simply paralysing. This is also true in cases where countries choose to opt for treatment. Treating HIV-positive persons may mean that many of them can continue functioning, as schoolteachers or whatever. But the treatment is ongoing year after year, and the impact on national health budgets, even if they are given these anti-retroviral drugs for free, is incredible. The real bottleneck in the use of advanced complex medical treatments is not necessarily access to the drugs but the organisation of their delivery. Few people realise that we are talking about 18 to 20 different pills or medications that have to be taken at intervals of a couple of hours, around the clock; that their composition has to be changed every few weeks and that all of this has to be very strictly and precisely organised. On top of this, all these persons need safe drinking water and at least two good, varied meals per day. In a developing country, that is asking quite a lot.
The reality is not so easy. We have been informed that Merck and the Gates Foundation have jointly set up a USD 100 million fund for Lesotho. On top of that, Merck has provided free medicine in order to solve the problems of delivery on the ground. They have been working on this for a year without much progress. This is why it is not just an evasive response to lay stress on prevention. We have seen that it can work in the case of Uganda and in other places too we are beginning to see the AIDS curve go down.
I appreciate the response from Mr Wijkman. It is true that these organisations need money. We will come to this in the next question. But it will never be the role of the Commission to be a major supplier of general funding as such for the UN organisations. Freeing up additional money for these purposes is the role of the primary donors, that is the governments, who have the right to tax their citizens. That is how we mobilise additional money. It may also be possible to mobilise new private money. I hope this fund will be a breakthrough by doing so on a systematic basis.
As to our own unspent money, the fact is not that we have money floating around, which we then send back to Member States. The way the system is administratively organised in the case of the European Development Fund is that we call in money on a quarterly basis from the treasuries of the Member States on an ongoing basis. We have real commitments that have not been translated into actions in terms of spending the money. But as I have told Parliament on many occasions, we are going through the whole portfolio, reducing and scrapping those commitments that are not implementable and accelerating the flow in the pipeline. Most of the money is in principle committed – implementation is the real challenge.
As you were informed earlier, the rate of commitment from now on for AIDS activities will be at the level of about EUR 800 million a year. This shows that in terms of contribution, we are a major player and are making a big effort in these countries. The question remains to be answered: will we be allowed to do it legally and will this fund actually mean improved ability to deliver on the ground? These are the questions that we need to come back to."@en1
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