By Filipe Rufino - 10th April 2007
MEPs have welcomed a call by UN special envoy Jorge Sampaio for an EU-Africa health plan aimed at curbing the spread of tuberculosis and HIV.
Speaking to the parliament’s development committee on Tuesday, the former Portuguese president warned that the two diseases are fast spreading across Africa, forming “a noxious synergy" which developing countries cannot fend off by themselves.
“It is clear that there is a correlation between the two diseases…in some sub-Saharan regions up to 77 per cent of tuberculosis patients also have HIV”, Sampaio told MEPs.
The EU - the world’s largest development aid donor - should improve cooperation and coordination between HIV and tuberculosis programmes, he said.
“We are providing antiretrovirals to as many people as we can in Africa but they are now dying because of tuberculosis, which is curable”.
Training doctors
A lack of African doctors - able to diagnose both diseases and to follow-up on treatment - is also a major problem, Sampaio added.
“It is sobering to recognise that only 0.5 per cent of estimated HIV patients are currently tested for tuberculosis and seven per cent of tuberculosis patients are tested for HIV worldwide”.
An EU plan to train health practitioners on how to manage the two diseases across Africa “would not be too expensive”.
The initiative would also help offset the economic costs of the two diseases for African economies, which in some cases can amount to seven per cent of national GDP a year, according to Sampaio.
Building more hospitals and laboratories would also help combat the problem, at least in the medium term, he said.
EU-Africa summit
Socialist MEPs including Emanuel Jardim Fernandes called for the EU-Africa health plan to be included in the agenda of the next EU-Africa summit, to be chaired by the Portuguese presidency in December.
"This would be a good moment to stimulate a commitment from EU member states and African states to formulate together better policies to fight the two diseases”, Jardim Fernandes told this website.
“I am certain this idea is shared by the other members of the socialist group” the Portuguese MEP added.
Tuberculosis alone kills six million people a year, of which 90 per cent are in the developing world, according to WHO statistics.
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