Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-01-18-Speech-2-498-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20110118.20.2-498-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I should like to start by giving what seems to me a clear example of the urgency of this initiative. We began work in Parliament exactly six months ago: six months have passed between starting work on the report and the time of voting, during which more than 700 000 people have developed Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. This figure on its own shows how important and urgent it is to take action in this area. That is why the Commission Communication is timely.
I will finish by saying that I should like to question Commissioner Dalli directly, so as to ask him which of the proposals included in this report the Commission is prepared to accept, and when it will be prepared to accept and take action against an emergency of the scale that we are currently experiencing.
All people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other dementias in Europe must be treated the same. There are more than 7 million people with Alzheimer’s and almost 10 million suffering from dementias as a whole.
If we were talking about numbers, we would be talking about the scale of a medium-sized country. We cannot discriminate against a disease in the same way that we cannot discriminate against a country. We must treat them all equally. It is for this very reason that it is urgently necessary to take action in several areas. In the area of research, we know that the number of people suffering this disease doubles every 20 years.
We know that if the age range considered is over 65, the number doubles every four years, which is exactly why we need to tackle the causes and discover the causes, because we have no other way to take action against a problem if we do not have a good knowledge of it. To achieve this, we need more research, more cooperation and more epidemiological data.
We need to know more about how to take action in terms of prevention and of controlling risk factors. We need early diagnosis, we need specialised care and we need to train carers. We need to give support to families and to not stigmatise sufferers: we need to give them rights and to give them dignity. We need all countries to have national action plans so that we can then cooperate at European level. We need to combat inequalities between the Member States and within the Member States. We cannot accept that there should be first- and second-class patients: they must all be equal, regardless of sex, age, place of residence or any other criterion.
That is why, Mr President, it is very, very important for our health services to have the maximum coverage possible. We cannot avoid talking about these urgent needs just because we are in crisis and are always talking about the disease’s costs. The social and economic costs of failing to treat this problem are far larger, far greater than those of facing up to it. That is why we have to face up to this problem and invest: invest in people; invest, as I said, in preventing and giving support to the families and carers who are so often forgotten.
We know that, for every person suffering from Alzheimer’s, three people are needed to care for them. A person suffering from Alzheimer’s cannot go one hour unaccompanied. This must serve as a lesson to us: we cannot continue without the Member States linking up in their response to this problem; without cooperation and, moreover, cooperation on the basis of solidarity.
That is why I would like to say the following: on the subject of cooperation, we all know that none of this work can be done in isolation and here in Parliament, too, it has been undertaken in cooperation with all the shadow rapporteurs from all the parliamentary groups; with the support of the three women who helped me in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, in my parliamentary group, and in my delegation.
That is why I should like to thank all these women, and perhaps it is no accident that it was only women who worked on this report: this is because women are the most affected, dealing both with reports about Alzheimer’s and with sufferers of Alzheimer’s, including men. I therefore also want to draw attention to the types of discrimination obscured by the lack of treatment or response to these issues."@en1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples