Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-04-Speech-4-032"
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"en.20011004.2.4-032"2
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"Members of the Lutte Ouvrière party will vote in favour of this report, despite its shortcomings, due to the realistic account it gives of the catastrophic situation in poor countries and the few limited, yet positive, measures that it proposes. It is appalling when we take account of the fact that three communicable diseases are killing five million people per year in poor countries and ten thousand people per day in Africa alone and that, moreover, the number of victims is increasing. This is very true in the case of AIDS, where there is no known cure, whereas there are cures available for tuberculosis and malaria. Despite this, malaria, which a few years ago appeared to be on course for total eradication has, as the report highlights, become the main cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa, whilst tuberculosis, for which there are simple and effective treatments, continues to be the disease most widespread throughout the world.
The cause of this situation is simple. Drug manufacturing is monopolised by large pharmaceutical corporations, whose prime concern is not public health, but profit. The recent ignominious action brought by certain pharmaceutical corporations against South Africa is characteristic of this intolerable situation, even though public opinion did, to a certain extent, cause these corporations to back off. The report’s proposal that aims for the European Union to recognise on the international level the right of developing countries to produce and sell generic drugs within their countries, without costs resulting from intellectual property rights, is the least we can do. Another example of this would be to impose specifications on the pharmaceutical corporations obliging them to produce drugs for these diseases, which the report says are neglected by the industry because they are not profitable enough.
The report limits itself to mentioning a reduction in prices. Millions of people in poor countries will only be able to have access to minimum treatment if certain drugs, particularly malaria drugs, are free of charge. The report tries to reconcile the protection of patents with access to healthcare in developing countries; we reaffirm that industrial patents, and more specifically those patents involving the pharmaceutical industry, should be completely abolished. They do nothing to protect the intellectual property of the inventor, they only serve to guarantee the corporations a monopoly position and therefore the enormous profits that they earn to the detriment of public health and life itself.
The heading of the report says that the fight against infectious diseases contributes to poverty reduction. In fact, most of these diseases are diseases related to poverty, even to malnutrition. Only an improvement in people’s standard of living would be effective in eradicating most of them. Having said this, however, for the benefit of the advocates of the market economy and capitalism, the simple fact that it is organically incapable of providing the most basic treatment and daily food for a considerable proportion of humanity in the twenty-first century, even though it has scientific and material possibilities like never before, irreparably condemns it."@en1
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