Today's Date:

Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I should like to devote the few minutes of my remarks to five principal ideas:

I - First: Prevention: prevention efforts remain critical to bringing the epidemic under control.

But prevention must be bolder, closer to the realities of the HIV/AIDS infection.

Prevention must inform, of course, but it must also demarginalize, render people less vulnerable to the risks of contamination. Sincere medically correct prevention not just politically correct.

It is a known fact--though one that still often goes unacknowledged and unanswered--that women, migrants and individuals who engage in stigmatized sexual practices are most frequently the victims now. These populations are the most exposed, the ones to whom our societies offer the fewest possibilities in addressing the risks of contamination and also in coping with the disease once they are infected. These are the people whom our prevention efforts must target as a priority.

II - Secondly, we must stop separating prevention and care when experiences in many countries, including mine, has shown on the contrary that they reinforce each other.

It can be reasonably estimated that 90% of infected individuals in the countries of the South are unaware of their serological status whereas according to all the experts, this is the keystone to prevention.

Now, what better incentive to be tested is there than the chance of being offered treatment if the test if positive? The prospect of treatment is a powerful stimulus, a guarantee of effectiveness, of prevention. An encouragement through hope.

III - Thirdly, we must combat the false ideas--with their clearly racist overtones at times--about treatment in the countries of the South.

To persons, including those in high official positions, who assert that Africans are incapable of undertaking complex treatments, we must answer that the studies that have been done, for example in Côte d'Ivoire and Uganda, have very clearly shown the opposite.

The human being, you see, is human everywhere in the world. When hope and life are not refused him, he is capable of seizing both, of learning, of advancing yes, everywhere in the North and South whatever the colour of his skin. I was a doctor in Africa for many years, and I can confirm this.

That reminds me of discussions in my country about drug-users of whom it used to be said in some quarters that they didn't want or couldn't get treatment.

A few years later, it became clear that these pseudo-experts were grievously mistaken. Fortunately, we did not listen to them. History proved them wrong. Perhaps it will judge them one day as it will judge each of us, on our determination not to leave the sick of the South to die now and in future.

IV - Fourthly, we must continue our efforts to make accessible the medicines that have changed the lives of tens of thousands of sufferers in each of our wealthy countries. This requires, of course, first a continued reduction in prices through three complementary mechanisms that make it possible:

- negotiating with laboratories to obtain differentiated pricing.

- the concrete implementation of the TRIPS agreements in the direction most favorable for the sick.

- the development of generics.

But even if we manage to achieve costs in the area of 200 to 250 euros per year per sufferer, as many experts think, these medicines will still be out of reach of countries in the South without massive international support. That is the purpose of the global fund proposed by Kofi Annan that we strongly support. France has already pledged a contribution of 150 million euros in the form of new, supplementary financing.

We believe this fund should give a prominent place to the fight against AIDS, especially by taking the sick into care and including the purchase of antiretroviral drugs. No-one would understand how such a new and sweeping initiative might leave thousands of infected persons the forgotten ones of history. I owe it to myself to be clear. I am strongly in favor of prevention but if we do not offer treatment as soon as possible all the seropositives today will die.

V - Fifth and last, to achieve the requisite quality in providing treatment to the sick, given the nature of the therapies, we must strengthen the health structure capacities of the countries of the South. It would serve no purpose to make financing available for the purchase of drugs if the countries cannot deliver them to the sick in satisfactory conditions. That is the reason for the initiative that has been proposed by France, with several other European countries--Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and Slovenia and Switzerland--with the hope that others will soon join us. This is a global project at the disposition Mr. Kofi Annan and countries that ask to be in it and that, politically, will direct the implementation.

The hospital partnership initiative mobilizes the experience acquired in our countries for the benefit of countries that so wish in Africa, and also Latin America and Asia.

The proposal, in our view, closely complements the establishment of the world fund. It is a useful tool, directly and quickly operational. But it represents, I believe, even more than that: It is a genuine commitment of solidarity on the part of our hospital personnel--directors, doctors, pharmacists and nursing staff.

Mr. President, those are the points I wanted to make very briefly in the name of France./.