Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-04-Speech-4-034"
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"en.20011004.2.4-034"2
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"Mr President, in the North people think it is all over where AIDS is concerned. It is not, of course, but changing lifestyles and the arrival of effective drug regimes have, at least, helped us turn a corner on the long road that we walk. The forecasts when I was health minister fighting these issues were not the same as the forecasts now.
But in the South the picture is very different. Ninety-five per cent of the five million new cases every year are in low-income countries in the South. There are 25 million people living with AIDS in Africa and 6 million in the new-growth area in Asia – South and Southeast Asia in particular.
Where AIDS is concerned we face a vicious cycle of infection, incapacity and poverty alongside the 16 million deaths we have already seen: two million deaths a year in Africa, a quarter of all Africa's deaths. Ten per cent of people between fifteen and fifty years of age are living with AIDS, and there are 10 million orphans. The people who expected to be looked after in their old age are now unable to have that care and support because their children are dead. That is the scene confronting us.
When
went to Zambia and looked at a particular hospital, it saw two-thirds of the patients there dying of AIDS. People's limbs, they reported, looked like broken broomsticks. When they were asked what they were desperate for, they did not say retroviral drugs, they said food, because they were too poor to be able to afford either. Poverty hastens death, and deaths accelerate the survivors' descent into poverty.
In Zambia the department of health then estimated that half the population would die of AIDS. That is a human disaster. We are facing human disasters in America now. The world is looking at the headlines, the world is taking action, governments are coming together, people are demanding and subscribing to solutions. But they are not doing that where AIDS, TB and malaria are concerned. It is not terrorism, but it is a health terror and horror that is preventable. That is why the honourable Member's report is so important and fundamental. I congratulate him and the Commission on the work that has been done on this matter and everyone who has participated.
Poverty reduction goes hand in hand with the war against disease, disability and death. We desperately need more resources for drugs and vaccines, but must also ensure their adequate distribution to people, so that drugs do not sit in storage deteriorating. We must have adequate education, monitoring and research. It has rightly been said that research should be conducted in Africa, by Africans, for Africans and, where appropriate, with the support, cooperation and partnership of the Western world, along the lines of the IAVI initiative between Oxford and Nairobi.
TB too, of course, is a killer. It accounts for two million deaths a year, 95% of them in developing countries; it is the leading cause of HIV deaths; one infected person can pass it on to ten others. Malaria is the third killer; 90% of deaths from Malaria occur in Africa – one death every 30 seconds. In the past four minutes, eight people have died from malaria. I want us and the Commissioner to keep those people who are dying of these diseases in mind and see what we can do. The honourable Member has provided the words in this report; now it is time for the Commission to act."@en1
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