Cape Argus
June 03 2003

  Paris - French President Jacques Chirac has sacrificed the health of Aids victims on the altar of mending relations with United States President George Bush which were broken over the war in Iraq, health NGOs charged on Monday night.

On Monday Chirac and Bush very publicly made up at the G8 summit, as the G8 released their action plans on health, water, trade and combatting famine especially in Africa.

But the NGO Health Gap said the G8 action plan on health had been weakened after interventions by the US to water down references to increasing access to essential medicines and strengthening the financing of the Global Fund to fight Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.

Health Gap's Sharonann Lynch said Chirac had previously been strongly committed to the fund and increasing access to medicines for the poor.

She said the health plan now barely mentioned the Global Fund because the US preferred bilateral to multilateral action to fight disease.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) agreed, saying: "Just to get a pat on the back from Bush, Chirac has sacrificed the right of millions of people to have access to medicines they need to survive and the rest of the G8 are merrily going along for the ride."

The plan puts strong emphasis on the market approach to health care. It welcomes private pharmaceutical companies' provision of discounted essential medicines to developing countries; encourages developing countries to take up offers from these companies of free and discounted drugs; and urges them to bring down medicine prices by lowering their tariffs and fees on discounted and donated medicines.

MSF said as a result, "funding for health will find its way into the pockets of Western drug companies rather than contributing to longterm sustainable supplies of affordable medicines".

It contained no new money for water or sanitation.NGOs were also strongly critical of the G8 action plans on water and trade.

The water plan, also drafted mainly in support of Nepad, is aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving the numbers of people without access to drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

The plan commits the G8 countries to prioritising assistance to developing countries which make a political commitment to meeting these goals and which generally display good governance.

The plan also highlights the importance of giving high priority to water in G8 official development aid allocations, using such aid to leverage public-private partnerships which the G8 will promote, where appropriate, to meet the backlog in water infrastructure in developing countries, especially Africa.

In their trade plan the G8 agreed to improve their preferential trade agreements with developing countries.

But the plan made no reference to placing a moratorium on export subsidies and other export support for G8 farmers exporting to Africa, as Chirac had proposed before the summit.

The NGOs Tearfund and WaterAid dismissed the water plan, saying it contained no new money for water or sanitation.

The only offer of money on the summit table - a European-led plan for a 11 billion Water Fund announced previously, was "little more than a drop in the ocean" compared to the total $60-billion (about R482-billion) a year needed to meet the MDGs.

The British NGO World Development Movement slammed the trade plan, saying the G8 had again refused to end their abuse of the trading system through massive agricultural subsidies and import barriers on processed goods and textiles.