Brussels, 26/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - Two years after its adoption, the Community's action plan for fighting against the main communicable diseases that are decimating the different populations and obstructing development in the poorest countries, has still not born fruit. The progress report by the Commission, published on Wednesday on the implementation of the programme has mixed results. The positions defended by the Union on the basis of the programme have allowed for significant progress to be made world-wide in action against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis but there still remains a lot to be done by all concerned to defeat these scourges. More efforts are also required in order to ensure that regular dialogue is kept up and structured with developing countries, as well as guarantees for common action at a European level and in tandem with specific European partners.
The action plan adopted in February 2001 exclusively focused on prevention. It defined a series of actions for strengthening the impact of existing intervention, improving the availability of essential medicines at affordable prices and encouraging research and development in the global means employed in the fight against the effect of these disease at national, regional and planetary levels.
The objective of improving the results of existing results has not been positive, given the increasing number of deaths causes by these diseases. The reason for this is the absence of collective action on a wide scale at either national or global levels, with few people benefiting from effective action against tuberculosis or malaria with anti-retroviral drugs.
The main advantage of the programme is to have enabled the Commission, with the aid of its partners to draw attention to these diseases and the need to act in a co-ordinated way for attaining these objectives, notably at the G8, EU-US Summits, the EU/African Union forum and the WTO. This awareness still needs translating into an effective mobilisation of the international community. The Commission stresses that the EU would continue to appeal for coherency in international action in the areas of health, education, trade and research and an increase in spending on social structures in developing countries.
Access to medicines appears more encouraging. The report demonstrates that the differentiated prices strategy defined by the Commission for facilitating acces of the poorest countries to cheap medicines has gained widespread support and has been applied by some medicine manufacturers in their sales to poor countries. In order to guarantee that these medicines are at least half price, get to their destination and are not illegally re-imported to the EU, the commission has proposed a regulation that is also a step forward. EU action to get the WTO to agree that intellectual property protection is at the service of the imperatives of public health, clashed with US opposition but the Union is anxious to find a multilateral and sustainable solution as rapidly as possible in order to allow for access of developing countries to generic medicines that are unconnected to production capacity in the pharmaceutical sector. The Commission's contribution to world funds in the fight against AIDs, tuberculosis and malaria was EUR 120 million in 2002.
In the area of R&D, the Commission can boast of having progressed in the allocation of EU loans to this goal. In the Sixth Research Framework Programme, resources increased significantly for basic pre-clinical and clinical research into HIV/aids, malaria and tuberculosis. EU Member States, developing countries and other donors are part of the European programme of European and developing countries in clinical trials - a European integrated research programme in the fight against the three poverty-linked diseases. The Commission also intends to invest EUR 200 million into more basic research.