Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, this is a short debate on a hugely important topic. The three speakers who preceded me have outstanding experience and knowledge on this issue and I commend them on their remarks. I particularly commend the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on securing this debate, so relevant after the Kigali announcements and incredibly prescient since the Government will be making decisions about the Global Fund replenishment that has been made. The timing could not be better, and I hope and expect that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, will respond positively—but I look forward to hearing the extent of that positive nature.

The right reverend Prelate is right that this topic is not solely a health topic but is primarily a life chances topic. The eradication of these diseases has a low financial value but a high value in enabling and liberating girls and young women in particular, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, indicated. She stressed that 11.5 million pregnant young women, the focus of the Global Fund, will be impacted by this, which draws into sharp focus why we believe so passionately that the UK should repeat its full complement to the Global Fund replenishment, as it did last time. I will return to that in a moment.

Just two weeks ago when the Minister—along with the Prince of Wales, who was representing Her Majesty—was in attendance at CHOGM on behalf of the UK Government, I was fortunate to join the all-party group on malaria, of which the noble Lord, Lord Trees, is chair, which visited a health centre on the outskirts of Kigali. I met pregnant women who are directly benefiting from this work on greater education and awareness of how to receive medication and use nets and to communicate to the wider community about their effective use and the positive impact that makes.

We also visited a community health centre, where we met one of the networks, made up primarily of women, which provide vaccination services after the identification of potential malaria. These people are volunteers in their community. They are paired up, a man and a woman, in each community. I saw at first hand the materials they use from USAID, the equipment they have been provided with via the Global Fund from the UK contribution, and their impact on the wider community. I am sure that the Minister is aware of this but, if the UK does not replenish, we will see to the same extent we have seen before an immediate reversal in some of the progress we have heard about. It will not be a gradual decline, in the same way as we have seen a gradual improvement; it will be an immediate reversal, which is why the UK needs to replenish in full.

I welcome the Kigali Declaration on reducing NTDs by 90%. In the Commonwealth, there was a restatement of the ambitions with regard to malaria. However, we have been informed through our briefings that the 2018 Commonwealth declaration on the reduction of malaria, with the UK as chair-in-office, is now off track. I would be grateful if the Minister could give an update on where we are in the Commonwealth after the commitment on malaria made at the 2018 CHOGM. I remind the House that the commitment was to halve malaria across the Commonwealth by 2023. I would be grateful to know where we are on that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is absolutely right that we are at a dangerous tipping point. The good intentions of the summit and the Kigali Declaration were very positive. They included commitments totalling more than $4 billion from Governments, international organisations and philanthropists; commitments of more than $2.2 billion in partner countries’ domestic resources; and 18 billion tablets being donated by nine pharmaceutical companies. However, they will go only so far in maintaining this level of progress if the Global Fund replenishment, which supports the distribution of many donated medicines, does not happen, as this will reduce the capacity of partner countries to deliver them to their people. From the point of view of value for money, levering in support from other partner countries and the private sector for full replenishment should be seen as one of the best things we can do.

The tragedy of the cuts we have seen in UK ODA has been twofold. The first is something that is often under-debated: research and development. In many respects, the UK has led in the fight against malaria and NTDs because of UK research and what the UK has brought about through science and innovation, working with our universities, health partnerships and partner countries in particular. All that has come through UK leadership. Therefore, the cut in UK R&D as a result of the funding cuts will cause long-term damage.

Following the announcement of the ODA spend for 2021-22, UK Research and Innovation announced a £120 million research gap. Think about the partnerships with Imperial College, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of York and the University of Lancaster—these are world-leading partnerships that have been starved of the kind of capacity that is necessary for the next generation.

I am not an expert on these areas. I defer to the noble Lord, Lord Trees, all the time. In fact, I have in front of me the names of the conditions that he so easily pronounced, and I look down at my notes with foreboding because I cannot even pronounce them. However, getting to the next level of improvement will require even greater levels of innovation because by definition these people are harder to reach.

With the cuts to NTDs, with the matter—which we have debated and had Questions about over the period—of the disgrace of the incineration of medicines that could have been provided, and with the distribution of vaccines whose lives were just short of their effective use, we could potentially see 24 million people with lymphatic filariasis, 21 million people with river blindness, 21 million people with schistosomiasis and 4 million children with intestinal worms. That is the scale of the human impact.

Given the life chances that this measure is going to remove for those nearly 100 million people, I hope the Government will think again, lever in UK support and deliver the replenishment to the Global Fund in full.