European Parliament
Ribeiro e Castro (UEN ),
in writing
(PT)
This report makes clear the relationship between poverty and disease, disease and poverty. The health statistics for developing countries are horrifying: 28 000 children under five die every day, 2 million people die of tuberculosis each year, a million die of malaria, and so on. The spread of AIDS has also reached tragic proportions: 25 million Africans live with the disease, a quarter of that number have died, and 10% of people between the ages of 15 and 50 suffer from AIDS.
I support the proposal for greater health investment in developing countries and effective monitoring of the results. The effectiveness of that investment should be maximised through a simultaneous strategy of good resource distribution. I would also highlight the pressing need for a more productive debate on the question of access to medicines for communities in developing countries, since the scale of the disaster demands more creative, bold and determined responses.
I therefore agreed with most of this report. I abstained from the overall final vote, however, as I deplored the rapporteur’s failure to resist the temptation to include in the final resolution a paragraph written in that coded, ideological language which, like that of other reports produced by this Parliament, aims simply to enlist EU development policy in the international pro-abortion movement.

