Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-02-Speech-3-273-000"
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"en.20110202.19.3-273-000"2
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"Madam President, I am happy to be able to lend my support to a pan-European project that is very ambitious both for the European Union and for developing countries, and which is aimed at eliminating tuberculosis by means of a vaccination programme.
Let us remember that more than 1.7 million people died from tuberculosis in 2009. The cost in terms of human life is some 4 700 people per day. Add to this the annual economic losses, which are estimated at more than USD 50 billion for Africa alone. If, based on this, we were to reduce tuberculosis to a problem typical of developing countries, we should be greatly deceiving ourselves.
In fact, the cases reported in the United Kingdom and Ireland during the summer of 2010 remind us that the disease is here in our countries, not to mention the ravages caused by the same disease in the east of our continent, particularly in Russia and Moldova. The Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (TBVI) is an initiative that aims to create effective vaccines with a view to protect developing countries at an affordable price. With this in mind, I should like, if I may, to make the following comments.
First, health does not have a price but it has a cost. While access to healthcare must be universal, the ability to pay remains in itself limited to the industrialised nations. That being the case, it is important to spread the costs broadly. Clearly, patients in the North, that is to say in the industrialised countries, must pay a high price, otherwise the sources of funding for research will dry up quickly enough. However, given that the financial contribution of the countries of the South is, if not non-existent, then no more than purely symbolic, our solidarity becomes indispensable to overcome this shortfall.
Second, the TBVI initiative also has a place in the EU’s 2020 strategy. It is a perfect illustration of what we can achieve if we can establish our health priorities in good time.
My third, and concluding, comment is this: that this in no way excludes additional or complementary funding from the large institutional lenders, including the World Bank in particular. Other countries, such as the United States, Canada or a number of emerging countries that are affected by the problem of tuberculosis, whether directly, as it impacts on their populations, or indirectly in the context of international solidarity, should quite logically make their own contribution to this initiative too. To be specific, I am talking here about the public-private partnership model.
This new approach can be beneficial provided that solidarity is limited to those who have both medical and financial requirements. The alternative would be to protect only well-off populations."@en1
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