Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases

Debate between Patrick Grady and Gregory Campbell

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of the UK in ending malaria and neglected tropical diseases.

Thank you, Mrs Harris, and a very happy new year to you too. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate, and to the hon. Members from across the House who supported the bid, not all of whom have been able to make it here today. I think a few folk are stuck in traffic or whatever, so perhaps we will see some more faces as the debate goes on. I am very grateful to everyone who has come here to take part.

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Last year I and a number of colleagues visited Malawi with the all-party parliamentary group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases to learn more about the efforts to end these diseases, and to see at first hand the impact of UK investment on those efforts. I will draw on that experience in my contribution today.

We are particularly grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate now, because at the end of this month, on Tuesday 30 January, we will mark World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day—a day designated by the World Health Organisation to raise awareness of the challenge and the opportunity that we have to eliminate many of these deadly diseases. It will be the first such awareness day of the calendar year, and the fourth time that that particular day has been marked. This year’s theme is “Unite. Act. Eliminate.” It challenges decision makers and those in positions of power—including everyone taking part in this debate—to work together to mobilise the resources necessary to eliminate malaria and other neglected tropical diseases.

Debates such as this about international development can be full of acronyms, and we will no doubt hear today references to many of them, including SDGs, sustainable development goals; spending on ODA, official development assistance; and WHO, the World Health Organisation. Acronyms can be a useful shorthand, but we have to be careful that we do not reduce what we are discussing to technical or abstract concepts. When we talk about NTDs—neglected tropical diseases—we are not talking just about a group of 21 diseases that exist in test tubes or Petri dishes in a laboratory somewhere. These diseases are having an impact on the daily lives of 1.7 billion people around the world—nearly one in five of the global population. They can cause immense suffering, disability and disfigurement, and are often fatal. In many ways, it is not just the diseases that are neglected; the people affected by them are also, by definition, being neglected.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. He rightly says that we should not be distracted by the statistics, but given the fact that one in five people on the planet is affected, it is important that we remember that many of these diseases are entirely preventable if the right action is taken as early as possible.

[Patrick Grady]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. I think that the point he makes will come through in all the contributions and evidence that we hear today.

The evidence shows that, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, it is the poorest and most vulnerable and marginalised people in remote communities, and particularly women and girls, who are affected most by these diseases. For example, noma, which was added to the WHO’s list of NTDs just a few weeks ago, in December, is a severe gangrenous disease of the mouth and face that primarily affects malnourished children between the ages of two and six years in regions of extreme poverty. Hookworm, a type of soil-transmitted helminth, affects one in three pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa and can cause anaemia and lead to death during pregnancy. Schisto-somiasis, or bilharzia, which is slightly easier to say, is very common in Malawi, where we visited; it can lead to female genital schistosomiasis, of which there are 56 million cases worldwide, which can triple the risk of HIV and cause infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and in some cases maternal death.

The human cost of these diseases is incredibly high. On our visit to Malawi, in the Salima district we met a number of people who had lived with trachoma, a bacterial infection that can cause eyelashes to draw in, damaging eyesight and even causing blindness. People affected in that way can very easily lose their independence, and their family and friends have to dedicate time and resources to caring for them. If it is caught early, trachoma can be treated with antibiotics or surgery, and it can be prevented by good water and sanitation for health practices. The key lesson, which the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) just mentioned, is that trachoma can be eliminated altogether. That gives us another acronym, SAFE: surgery to treat the blinding stage of the disease, antibiotics to clear the infection, facial cleanliness and hand hygiene to help reduce transmission, and environmental improvements to help stop the infection spreading.

Hunger: East Africa and the Horn of Africa

Debate between Patrick Grady and Gregory Campbell

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That becomes even more important when the budget is squeezed. A local response and grassroots knowledge are absolutely critical in responding and building infrastructure. We heard that from the agencies, and I will reflect a little on that before the end of my contribution.

I think we will all welcome the announcement by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of a high-level pledging conference in New York on 24 May and the role the UK Government will play as a co-host. If the Government want to be taken seriously, they must lead by example. We will need not just announcements, but disbursements of scaled-up aid that will encourage other countries to do the same. There are already questions about exactly when and how the UK will disburse the pledge of £1.5 billion to the Nutrition for Growth fund. I know that Lord Oates, in another place, is paying particular attention to that through his United Against Hunger and Malnutrition initiative.

As the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) said, how aid funds are spent makes a big difference to both immediate response and resilience building. We will all have heard from non-governmental organisations on the ground about the importance of locally led interventions and that grassroots, community-based organisations are almost always best placed to know exactly what support is needed to help people in their area.

Aid in the form of cash transfers and social security empowers and dignifies individuals, even in the most difficult circumstances. Ensuring that children can continue to go to school and receive a meal while they are at school is perhaps one of the best examples of both meeting immediate need and investing in the future. Refugees International highlighted a study by the United States Agency for International Development that demonstrates that

“a more proactive response to avert humanitarian crises could reduce the cost to international donors by 30%, whilst also protecting billions of dollars of income and assets for those most affected.”

I am delighted to see that the Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), is with us today. The Committee’s report on food security is tagged to the debate on the Order Paper, and it recommends that the Government work to

“empower the Global Alliance for Food Security to develop international solutions to regional food security challenges.”

The report spoke particularly about the pivotal role of sustainable, smallholder farming and agriculture, undoubtedly based on exactly the kind of excellent evidence from organisations on the ground that have provided background briefing for today’s debate.

Given what is happening in Sudan, it is understandable that the Minister for Development cannot be here in person. He has taken a strong interest in this issue, and he and other Ministers have spoken about how they need and want to make the reduced aid budget as effective as possible. I think he feels the pain of many of us in Parliament and beyond who know and understand the importance of international development at the damage done to the aid budget, to the painstaking cross-party consensus built up around it and to the reputation the UK earned as a result. He might even look a little enviously at the vision outlined by the SNP for an independent Scotland, where 0.7% of GNI is a floor, not a ceiling, for aid spending. As Ministers say and we know, for now the reduced funds must be made to work smarter and harder.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is right to talk at length about the application of the resources that are available at the moment. Does he agree that the extraction of clean, drinkable water in much of Africa is part of the problem and that more could and should be done to assist NGOs and other groups? Their expertise in that aspect would do much to transform the horn and central Africa.

[Patrick Grady]

Yes, absolutely. I am wearing the Scotland-Malawi tartan tie today. In Malawi, a common phrase is “water is life”, and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for water, sanitation and hygiene, the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), is with us today as well. Water is absolutely crucial in all this, and even more important than access to food in some ways—a human being can survive for many days without food, but for barely any time at all without clean, safe water. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman.

That goes back to how we make the limited resources we have work effectively. That is particularly difficult to do when official development assistance funds are being spent by the Home Office. If the Home Secretary does not want people to come here on small boats from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan or Somalia, rather than spend taxpayers’ money on housing people in hotels or trying to deport them to Rwanda, we should spend it wisely and effectively on avoiding conflicts and ensuring that there is food security in the first place. People would then perhaps be less likely to flee their home countries. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]

There was wide cross-party support for this debate to be granted time by the Backbench Business Committee, and that is evident from the number of Members present and the interventions so far. Many of those hoping to contribute have had the privilege of visiting countries in the horn of Africa in recent months, and I look forward to hearing their testimonies. We all represent constituents who are passionate about achieving global justice and ending hunger—entirely preventable, totally unnecessary hunger—once and for all. Action is needed now, otherwise we will be back here again. The costs in terms of money and, more importantly, human lives will only be higher.