Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-08-Speech-4-118"
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"en.20050908.16.4-118"2
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"Mr President, I fully endorse this excellent report by the rapporteur Mr Bowis, but I feel that little justice can be done to the topic of major neglected diseases in developing countries in just two minutes. 1.8 million people died in 2002 from tuberculosis alone; 2.2 billion are at risk of malaria, which is preventable and curable provided that sufficient ACT or the new combination therapy is made available; 39.4 million people are living with the HIV virus, and last year alone 3.1 million died from AIDS, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. Only 700 000 of the 6 million who needed antiretrovirals could access that treatment.
The huge human, social and economic fall-out from this is incalculable. 60 million people, again in sub-Saharan Africa, are at risk from sleeping sickness via the tsetse fly. 2 500 million people – two-fifths of the world's population – are at risk from dengue, another mosquito-borne infection, which is now endemic in 100 countries, with no specific treatment or even a vaccine yet.
There is no specific treatment or vaccine available yet for the ravages of Ebola, which has hit the headlines in recent years in these parts and which has killed 1 200 since the virus was first discovered. The list of neglected diseases continues. We could also add, as our rapporteur does, the 121 million people living with depression. Nearly 9% of men worldwide and nearly 10% of women have a depressive episode each year. 873 000 people commit suicide, and that is probably underestimated. 50 million live with epilepsy, over 80% of them in the developing world; 24 million live with schizophrenia; 37 million live with dementia, mainly Alzheimer's and, with an ageing population, this is increasing all the time.
In conclusion, we have listed the problems, but what are the causes? Lack of clean water, lack of sanitation, lack of essential drugs, the cost of essential drugs, drug resistance issues, ineffective pesticides and drugs, drug toxicity, but above all, the main cause is the lack of political will in the developed world to do something about it. Our response to the SARS pandemic shows what we can do if we make communicable diseases a priority. This led to the establishment of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and, as our excellent rapporteur says, we urgently need the same dynamic approach to deal with the other major global diseases. Mr Bowis led us in relation to the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and he leads us here in this report. Thank you, John, you have done an excellent job."@en1
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