Brussels, 20/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - The acceleration of the fight against the main communicable diseases is the subject of a Communication to Parliament and the Council that the European Commission adopted on Wednesday and which Commissioner Poul Nielson presented to the press as "instrument in the fight against poverty".
This document describes the programme that the Commission is to implement over the coming years to reduce much more significantly the growing health and economic effects of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries, according to a new approach based on the following activities: a) reaching optimal impact of existing interventions, services and commodities targeted at the major communicable diseases affecting the poorest populations; b) increasing affordability of key pharmaceuticals through a comprehensive and synergistic global approach; c) increasing investment into research to combat the three major communicable diseases, which represents 90% of deaths worldwide, whereas only 10% of world research is devoted to them.
According to Poul Nielson, the originality of this approach is the introduction of a "single and coherent political framework of providing coordinated responses to these health scourges through all the Commission's competencies". The Commissioner, here, welcomes the unprecedented political backing demonstrated by his colleagues in the fight against poverty for which, according to him access to better health-care constitutes an essential element. "AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis have a disproportionate impact on the level of development of the poorest countries", the Commissioner stressed, recalling that these diseases were responsible for 5 million deaths and the contamination of 300 million people every year.
The Commissioner stressed the growing aid provided by the EU through its programme for combating AIDS over the past few years, aid that places it second in the ranks of international donors, behind the World Bank, with 3.4 billion euro invested since 1990 in over 100 developing countries (these funds represented 1% of the EU's aid to development in 1986 against the current 8% and 5.5% in the framework of the OECD). He did, however, add that, with the current budget, it would be impossible to undertake an effective fight against diseases that have not been eradicated and are even seeing a revival.
Poul Nielson concluded by announcing that on 28 September there was to be an international round table at the highest level, organised on the initiative of the Commission and co-sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UNAIDS programme, in view of working out an action programme for implementing this programme. This round table will bring together representatives from some forty developing countries, representatives of Member states, the European Parliament, the pharmaceutical industry, research bodies and non-governmental organisations.
The communication adopted on Wednesday is the first response provided by the Commission to the recommendations made by the G8 in July. The integrated strategy that it contains is in direct line with the guidelines, defined in April, for a new Union development policy, based on the reduction of poverty and a greater level of coherence and synergy between development policy and other EU sectoral policies.