Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-08-Speech-4-121"
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"en.20050908.16.4-121"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like first of all, as has been done previously, to congratulate my fellow Member, Mr Bowis, on his excellent report on major and neglected diseases, which is both comprehensive and balanced.
On the eve of the United Nations Summit in New York, where the Millennium Goals will be at the centre of debate, this report forms part of a highly topical subject area. It is pointless to remind you that we already know that these goals will not be achieved in the timeframe that we had set ourselves and that they are about to be added to the list of promises broken by the rich nations.
As three out of eight of the principal Millennium Goals concern health care issues, the work of my fellow Member, Mr Bowis, should ensure there is a greater level of awareness of this reality. In addition to showing the necessary awareness of the situation, I would like the European Parliament to deliver a strong and clear message to the Member States to revive the goals. The health care issues that the poorest countries must face fuel the spiral of their under development.
The observation is simple; those who today have most need of treatments do not have access to them. Why? Either because they are expensive or because fundamental research and the development of research are inadequate, indeed non-existent, for certain major and neglected diseases. Furthermore, when these drugs do exist and are affordable, the populations in some cases do not have access to them, as they are not adapted to the particular sanitation conditions in these countries.
The problem is more serious and of a structural nature; while the fundamental research is mainly carried out by the public sector, the development of these drugs is almost entirely in the hands of the private sector. Without a guarantee of profits, the pharmaceutical industry has no interest at all in investing in the development of new molecules. Any innovation is therefore dependent on obtaining highly profitable patents. It is therefore practically impossible for populations with weak purchasing power, the vast majority of whom come from the countries targeted by the Millennium Goals, to obtain these drugs, which are vital nonetheless. This logic also leads to prices being fixed at an artificially high level. In the era of globalisation, ladies and gentlemen, the health of each person must be the responsibility of all. As regards drugs, it is needs that must dictate our strategy for action to deal with the worldwide issue of health and development.
Furthermore, we must also encourage and support developing countries so that they might devote a minimum of 20% of their budgets to health care policies, policies of investment in research and development or policies for adapting intellectual property rules. These countries’ financial resources are, therefore, insufficient on their own. There can be no progress in today’s world as regards the major challenge of health care without a shared commitment from the public authorities and the private sector. The pharmaceutical industry must emerge from an exclusively profit-making mind-set and revise its commitments and its priorities, in particular in the research and development sector but also in the marketing sector. As for the public authorities, they must lay down legal frameworks, set objectives and offer perspectives that guarantee the common good while respecting the interests of each person.
I therefore draw the attention of the Council and of the Commission to the need to take initiatives: to draft a new international treaty on research and development in medicine, to include within the seventh European Union Research Framework Programme a specific reference to research and development for neglected diseases, which would be guaranteed funding, to ensure that the Doha Declaration on compulsory licences is not challenged by bilateral trade agreements, and, finally, to encourage the swift entry into force of the Community regulation, currently being debated by Parliament and the Council, enabling the generic medicines industry to produce treatments that will prevent health care disasters with tragic repercussions for a large part of our planet."@en1
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