Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-11-Speech-3-473"
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"en.20090311.41.3-473"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, anyone visiting sub-Saharan Africa can easily see, in most countries, the enormous weakness in their health systems and the extremely negative impact that this weakness has on the lives and health of the people who should be helped by these services.
The figures regularly published at international level constantly confirm this. In this respect, the idea that simple and practical gestures, which are not particularly elaborate or even particularly expensive, might be sufficient to save many lives is extremely disturbing. European financial support can be crucial in this respect and we must always keep in mind that cooperation in the area of health is truly strategic and directly involves not just one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) but many of them. The Court of Auditors found, and I quote, that ‘EC funding to the health sector has not increased since 2000 as a proportion of its total development assistance despite the Commission’s MDG commitments and the health crisis in sub-Saharan Africa’. End of quotation. It also recognised, and again I quote, that: ‘The Commission contributed significant funding to help launch the Global Fund [to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria] but has not given the same attention to strengthening health systems although this was intended to be its priority’. End of quotation.
According to the Court, this will have happened, and again I quote, because ‘the Commission has had insufficient health expertise to ensure the most effective use of health funding’. End of quotation.
The Court of Auditors therefore directly presents the European Commission with a huge challenge, which I endorse. For our part, I want to reiterate this challenge, based on the objectivity of this data and this assessment. Health services already form part, but must increasingly form part, of our development assistance priorities, and they therefore merit an increase in funding. Optimising how aid is given, bearing in mind the apparently opposing needs of coordination of management and proximity to the beneficiary populations, will be to provide a service that can save many lives.
The European Commission cannot fail to respond positively to this challenge and I urge it to do so. Just now, Mr Bowis made a touching speech in which he managed to put faces, human faces, to the dry coldness of these numbers from the Court of Auditors. The challenge for us, Commissioner, is to ensure that our cooperation can put a look of happiness and hope on these same faces. That is why, Commissioner, it is vital that we change the numbers in our health cooperation."@en1
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