Brussels, 26/11/2007 (Agence Europe) - It is absolutely vital that the ACP states allocate 50% of their annual expenditure to health, particularly to the fight against neglected diseases affecting more than a billion people in the world, as they pledged to do in 2001. For its part, the EU must respect its objective to mobilise 20% of its development aid for health and education in these countries. The ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly made this request in a resolution adopted on 22 November in Kigali (Rwanda) on access to healthcare and medicines, particularly in the cases of the neglected diseases. These tropical diseases, “which do not get sufficient attention, do not kill, but disable people and greatly reduce their capacity to work and live”, are legion, stressed British Conservative MEP John Bowis, who is the co-rapporteur on this subject, alongside Martin Magga, an MP from the Solomon Isles. Cholera/endemic diarrheal diseases, dengue haemorrhagic disease, dracunculosis (a worm infestation disease found in Guinea), lymphatic filariasis, leprosy, Chagas' disease, onchocerciasis (river blindness), schisotosomiasis, trachoma, endemic treponematoses, African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), Buruli ulcer, diabetes and mental illness feature among these diseases. The resolution calls for prevention to be at the heart of the policies of the ACP states and for measures to be taken to stem the brain drain in the healthcare sector, to fight against counterfeit medicines and to improve the access of the populations to medicines at affordable prices, particularly via the flexibility offered by the agreement on the trade-related aspects of intellectual property. (A.N.)