Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Lord Verjee Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Verjee (LD)]

My Lords, it is with a very full set of emotions that I stand before noble Lords this afternoon to make my maiden speech in the House. These emotions are hard to describe but they include great trepidation, great gratitude and great humility. I will deal with the easy one first: great trepidation as I stand before this august House, full of its long history, tradition and the wisdom of all the noble Lords gathered here today. This would indeed be humbling for any new Member of this House and I will have a great sense of relief when I complete this maiden speech and sit down.

I stand here in gratitude for so many reasons, including gratitude to my noble friend Lord Chidgey for introducing this debate. I am very fortunate to speak in this debate for many reasons. We are debating here a Global Fund not just for HIV but for tuberculosis and malaria, and in the country where I was born, Uganda, malaria is still the biggest killer. It accounts for nearly half of all the deaths of children in any one year.

Ten years ago, I myself contracted malaria in the jungles of India. There are two types of malaria. There is the less lethal type that none the less revisits you and debilitates you year after year, and then there is what is called “cerebral” malaria, which goes straight to your brain and kills you. I had the second kind. That day, I could have easily joined the ranks of the well over 500,000 people who die of malaria every year. I was told I had only a day or more to live. It is only because I had access to the best medical treatment that I survived. Today, thanks to the deal that was recently made in Washington DC, far more people will survive and become malaria-free, as I did. I am proud to say that the British Government’s contribution to the fund has trebled, and we continue to be the second largest contributor in the world—for this, I am here to say thank you.

I am also full of gratitude to all the staff, team, police and security personnel, and to Black Rod’s department, for all the most courteous, patient and kind help over the past few weeks as I so obviously wandered around very lost but trying hard not to appear so. I am full of gratitude, too, to my supporters: my noble friends Lord Dholakia and Lady Brinton. To follow in the immense footsteps of my noble friend Lord Dholakia is both a privilege and a challenge for a new Member of the House, and for me in particular, as we both hail from east Africa. I am full of gratitude to my noble friend Lady Brinton for all her help, support and confidence as we launched a leadership programme for my party that is designed to mentor and develop people from underrepresented groups so they can become MPs and participate in the governance of this country.

I am full of gratitude most of all to the country and people of Great Britain. My family were dispossessed by Idi Amin of Uganda in 1972 because we were Asians, yet I was able to come here and prosper in this country and become an entrepreneur, and my family and I were able to live in freedom and dignity. This country gave me the opportunity to thrive and I truly hope I can help many more people to have that very same opportunity.

The Global Fund and similar institutions provide these very same opportunities to people all over the world. I recently had the honour to travel with former President Clinton, who works with the Global Fund, to five countries in Africa. We visited Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa, to see the projects supported by the Clinton Foundation. In Zanzibar, we visited a project called ZAPHA+, established some 20 years ago for Muslim women in a tiny community who had been stigmatised and shunned for being HIV positive. This project took them in, provided support groups and business skills for them and helped them to turn their lives around. When we visited, the women were happy, healthy and confident, and introduced us and President Clinton to their HIV negative children. It showed me what aid money can achieve when it is well spent. I assure noble Lords that the money committed by our Government will transform lives.

Finally, I speak with a great sense of humility. The late President Nelson Mandela once said that,

“after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb”.

It has indeed been a great hill for me to climb from my birth in Uganda to my ascent into the House of Lords. I see now that there are many more hills to climb—hills on which there are people who need our help. I can rest at the end of this, my maiden speech, knowing that I will be climbing those hills together with other noble Lords. Thank you.