Mr President, in 2001 this Parliament asked the European Commission to make primary education and basic health care spearheads of development policy. Now 35% of the development budget goes on social expenditure, including education and health care. For Africa one of the biggest threats is the AIDS epidemic. Along with tuberculosis and malaria this is a disease requiring extra attention in the Commission’s policy. In the present announcements this attention is very clearly in evidence in the action programme. Attention is focused on these three diseases. The arguments for the approach to these three diseases remain valid and have even become clearer still than previously where AIDS is concerned. Public opinion however is not yet fully mobilised around a clear realisation of the worldwide crisis that these three diseases represent. There is still an urgent need for large-scale collective action. In his report Mr Bowis rightly says that, in addition to these three diseases, the approach to other poverty-related diseases also warrants attention. African trypanosomiasis, better known by the name sleeping sickness, is a good example of this. There are two stages to this infectious disease. In the first stage the victim suffers fever and debilitation. The disease is difficult to recognise at this point, but relatively easy to treat. If the disease is not treated, then the parasite moves from the blood to the brain. It can take anything from a few weeks to years before the disease progresses from phase 1 to phase 2. In stage 2 the victim suffers fits and convulsions. Sleeping sickness is easy to recognise in the second phase, but treatment then is far more difficult. If the disease is not treated, the patient goes into a coma and inevitably dies. There is a general lack of such treatment in the developing countries. An unnecessarily large number of people die because the diagnosis cannot be made in time and medicines are not available or are far too expensive. The agreement on the cheap AIDS medicines that was concluded last Saturday as part of the WTO negotiations is a big step forward in combating this poverty-related disease. To give priority to basic health care ahead of regulations in the field of intellectual property was a crucial decision. Failure would have destroyed confidence in the ability of the WTO to have a development round to tackle the injustices in the world trade system. All the WTO members now have an obligation to ensure that the agreements work in practice. European countries must promise, just as Canada has already done, that producers of generic medicines obtain licences from the country in question for export to developing countries. It is also important in the WTO negotiations that, where the trade in services or GATTS is concerned, the right of every WTO member to regulate public services should be guaranteed and that developing countries must not be compelled to hand government control of basic services such as health care over to the market. I would like to say expressly that, in this, I feel supported by the attitude of the Commission and Commissioner Lamy. In this our positions do not differ. If you were to ask a random passer-by in Strasbourg how his health was, then that will always count as number one. If we later go to South Africa, I should like to see a similar random passer-by whom we meet there able to say the same, and for us to be able to live safely in the same world village, on the same street.

Political group: PSE