MEP urges new focus for campaign against AIDS

Date: 25/04/1996

THE EU is being urged to concentrate its efforts to combat AIDS in the developing world on targeting information campaigns and preventative measures at countries where the disease has not yet turned into an epidemic.

Such tactics offer the most realistic chance of containing the spread of AIDS, argues Belgian Liberal MEP Anne André-Léonard.

“I feel we must focus more information on people primarily concerned, such as women, children and paramedical staff, and direct our activities to countries where AIDS is still only at an early stage,” she said this week.

André-Léonard will argue her case when Euro MPs meet on 8 May to set out their priorities for the 15 million ecu the Union intends to spend annually over the next five years on trying to contain the spread of AIDS throughout the developing world.

Current estimates suggest there are 13 million AIDS sufferers world-wide. Almost 90&percent; live in developing countries, the vast majority of whom are found in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall figures are forecast to rise to between 40 and 110 million by the end of the century.

The AIDS epidemic - caused by factors as diverse as poverty, poor health services, migration and wars - has become a real obstacle to economic development, warns André-Léonard.

She would like to see the EU concentrate its educational efforts on influential opinion formers such as politicians, the clergy, teachers and health professionals, as well as those most at risk: prostitutes, street children, the military and lorry drivers.

The Belgian MEP is also appealing to the Commission and member states to work with non-governmental organisations in establishing a 'solidarity fund' which would be used to treat AIDS sufferers. Such an initiative, she believes, would be a valuable addition to the EU's ten-year-old programme to tackle the disease in the developing world.

Not all the measures being considered involve cash transfers. Improving the legal and social status of women, changing inheritance rules so that females are not excluded and allowing migrant workers to be accompanied by their wives, would all reduce the risk of infection, says André-Léonard.