Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-04-Speech-4-019"
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"en.20011004.2.4-019"2
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". – Mr President, a family in a mud hut in rural Africa without access to clean water, electricity, hospital or community centre is simply devastated when it discovers that a member of the family is suffering from any one of the three diseases HIV/AIDS, TB or malaria. The patient has no access to a clinic nearby that can test, diagnose and treat him and, even if there is one, he cannot afford the treatment. The patient's family is in crisis, not only because of illness but also because it has to find the money for treatment that will include the cost of transport and additional nutritional requirements. This is the reality!
My Amendment No 1 addresses this problem and I have inserted the word "review" to replace the word "reduce", in order to cooperate with colleagues concerned about this issue. So I am not throwing it out of the window, I am asking us to review it in WTO. If there is justification for amending it, so be it.
I hope that this House will give me full support for this report, which I did not try to make political. It concerns something that we must do for the poor so that we can tell the world, especially the poor, that the European Union is concerned about their problems and will take the lead in fighting disease and poverty throughout the world.
Therefore, my objective was to produce a report with recommendations that would support a programme of action that is possible to fund, practical to implement, and most beneficial to those who are the poor victims of such infections. Such a report requires wide consultation with colleagues from all political groups, the European Commission, the pharmaceutical industry, UN agencies, NGOs and civil society, so that a consensus based on facts can be achieved and appropriate action taken to target the problem, making most efficient use of limited resources.
I had that wide consultation, and I want to thank all colleagues who were so helpful, in particular Dr Fransen and her team and Commissioner Nielson's department. Dr Fransen has worked in Africa herself, so she was a mine of information. I also want to thank all colleagues from all political parties, especially in the Committee on Development and Cooperation, related committees and, of course, the secretariats, who were extremely helpful.
The report promotes the following: a global fund financed by G8, the EU, oil-rich nations and others to finance access to and supply of medication and treatment; a global strategy to implement a programme of action to treat and prevent communicable diseases; tiered pricing of medicines from the pharmaceutical industry to ensure wide access to treatment; support for health infrastructure to scan, diagnose, treat and monitor patients, as supply of medicines in itself is inadequate; use of incentives – both financial and legislative – to enhance research and development to produce new medicines and vaccines by both industry and the public sector; the European Commission to work closely with the governments of developing countries, UN agencies, NGOs and civil society to implement the programme. It promotes appropriate future legislation to give more flexibility in the implementation of TRIPS to encourage transfer of technology for local manufacture of essential medicines wherever this is viable.
There are four paragraphs in the report which require minor changes because of errors or difficulty in implementation. My intention in paragraph 14 was to ensure that if we are to find the lowest prices for medicines for poor countries and for the patients in these countries, we must ensure that the developing countries do not impose import duty and taxes on imports of essential medicines.
Developed countries – the EU and the USA – do not impose export taxes when they export medicines from their countries. So there is a mistake in paragraph 14. I want to make an oral amendment, which I hope colleagues will accept. It should read: "Calls on developing countries to abolish tariffs and taxes on imports of essential drugs and equipment in order to make health care more affordable;". This paragraph really refers to import taxes in developing countries.
I also want to make an oral amendment to paragraph 9 to replace "10%" with the word "appropriate", because you cannot dictate to the European Commission and the Committee on Budgets what exact percentage of money should be spent – there are budget lines, which are already agreed in other committees and in other reports. So "appropriate" is the word, rather than "10%".
In paragraph 20, I would like to propose an oral amendment, which I hope Members of this House will support, to delete the second part which begins "in which a doubling of the budget ....". Again, the same problem applies: you cannot in a report like this put a fixed percentage when other committees have agreed budget lines and the Commission has budget appropriations fixed by the Council of Ministers for doing the job it is doing. These are minor changes.
Finally, I wish to clarify the issue of the patent life of medicines, as some colleagues have expressed concern. A new drug costs about USD 500 m to research, test and bring to market. Unless this sum is recoverable, nobody will invest in research and the development of drugs for diseases of the poor. No government can finance such investment so we must encourage the pharmaceutical industry to continue to finance research. Their patent is in any case irrelevant after seven or ten years as new drugs are developed and doctors will change a treatment regime, thereby precipitating the fall in price of that medicine still under patent. The real trick – and this is what I have been trying to do in this report – is to secure tiered pricing for all medication – new and old – so that the poor patients benefit whilst the industry continues to pay for research and development."@en1
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