WRITTEN QUESTION E-1757/97 by José Valverde López (PPE) to the Commission (27 May 1997)

Subject: Promoting a sense of individual responsibility with regards to the spread of AIDS and health and social support for sufferers

Data provided by the European Aids Monitoring Centre indicate that in the first nine months of 1996, 17 778 cases of AIDS were diagnosed. Since the beginning of the epidemic, 167 021 individuals have been infected.

Specialized health circles are expressing bafflement at the fact that prevention campaigns are not more extensive and effective, giving help and personalized health, psychological, social and economic follow-up for each sufferer or carrier so as to provide real support, providing information and creating an awareness of the need for personal responsibility to prevent further spread of this illness.

Europe's health structures can and must know how to treat sufferers and carriers, but the programmes implemented, far from playing such a role in terms of health and society, are spreading a message of gloom and doom at all levels, as if what is happening is a divine punishment about which nobody can do anything.

Can the Commission tell me which of the projects it has approved tackle the issue in these terms?

Answer given by Mr Flynn on behalf of the Commission (16 June 1997)

By Decision No 647/96/EC of 29 March 1996 ((OJ L 95, 16.4.1996. )), Parliament and the Council adopted a programme of Community action on the prevention of AIDS and certain other communicable diseases (1996-2000). This programme provides for a number of activities and measures designed to bring a Community dimension and added value to the prevention of AIDS. The programme's activities fall within four main areas:

* surveillance and monitoring of communicable diseases, helping to upgrade data on communicable diseases and to improve the coordination of monitoring systems;

* combating transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually-transmitted diseases, focusing mainly on persons whose behaviour places them at risk (drug use, prostitution and risky sexual relations) or who are placed in particular situations (penal institutions, travel);

* information, education and training;

* assistance in line with the needs of persons suffering from HIV/AIDS, combined with efforts to ensure that they are not discriminated against in any way.

Echoing national policies for AIDS prevention, the Community action programme pays particular attention to: the epidemiology of the disease in terms of methods of transmission; the prevention of transmission among groups of persons who are most at risk; and the provision of assistance to carriers. However, this strategy does not exclude appropriate information and education for the general public and young people in particular.

Most of the projects supported through the programme reflect the courses of action outlined by the Honourable Member.

To supplement this answer, the Commission is forwarding to the Honourable Member a list of the projects financed in 1996, together with the report from the Commission ((Doc COM(96) 720 final. )) to the Council and Parliament on the implementation of the 'Europe against AIDS 1994-95' action plan.