Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I appreciate being called in the debate, Ms Dorries, and I also declare an interest. I remain an ambassador for the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund—SCIAF.

When I became an ambassador, I got the chance to visit Kenya and Tanzania—back in 2006—before the big change to cheap access to antiretrovirals. I saw people languishing and I saw women in their fifties and sixties looking after the children of their children—sometimes 10 or 11 of them. In my local work I have established a youth group, and through the charity ZamScot we are building a school in a children’s centre in Lusaka. The centre rescues young boys who have grown up on the streets as AIDS orphans and sends them to primary school. They have often been on the streets since they were toddlers, and they finally go to school at the age of 12 or 13.

Along with other hon. Members, last autumn I had the opportunity, through Results UK, to visit Ethiopia. People who might have HIV—or even AIDS—are now on antiretrovirals and are looking after their families by taking part in growing their own food. That shows the difference that the world has been able to make by taking the decision to make the drugs available. The decision has transformed sub-Saharan Africa, and it has shown what the world can do when countries get together.

The trip to Ethiopia was about polio, a disease we are close to eliminating. The last remaining area with polio is on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has taken 30 years to get to that point, but it is incredible to think that polio might disappear in the next few years. Something can be done, and we have to keep on doing it.

The two things that require consideration are, first, the 10% limit, and whether it really leveraged anything or whether diplomatic pressure and sheer embarrassment would be more powerful, and, secondly, the transition in middle-income countries. It is important that such countries get at least a three-year warning and that, in our arrangement with them, we work towards a Government institution taking over. Often, non-governmental organisations do a lot of the work, and as we see ourselves moving towards a transition with a country we need to start pushing it to have proper institutional structures. Some 75% of HIV cases are in middle-income countries, and if we pull back, we will see that change.

In 2013, the United Kingdom stepped up in an incredible way, and we must not take our foot off the gas. It was the structures that had been developed through efforts to eliminate polio that spotted Ebola in west Africa. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) said, we need to protect ourselves—and not just our NHS—from multi-resistant TB coming in. There are selfish reasons for acting, but we can also develop the world economy, the African economy and the developing economy by allowing countries to have healthier populations.