Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460
- 462)
TUESDAY 11 JULY 2000
MR JACQUES
DU GUERNY
Mr Rowe
460. I want to ask you two entirely different
questions. The first one is that listening to you this morning
has made me wonder whether there is not a scope in some countries
at least for creating really —" I do not know what
phrase to use —" youth brigades because actually if
you are going to have a lot of orphans and young people with whom
the extended family is having difficulty coping, the possibility
of giving them a much more disciplined and centralised education/training
just seems to me to be at least worth thinking about. The other
one I want to ask you which is quite different is that in the
future we will have great difficulty, will we not, in ascertaining
what is really happening in disease because at the moment malaria
still kills more people than HIV/AIDS but if their immune systems
are destroyed malaria will probably increase enormously and a
lot of our strategies for combatting worldwide disease will be
distorted by this if we have not got the information that they
have HIV as well? Those are two totally different questions which
I wanted to ask.
(Mr du Guerny) Yes, they are very different. The youth
brigade, when I have been reading what NGOs have been doing I
have not come across such an idea or I have not seen it discussed.
I really cannot answer. It would require quite a lot of organisation.
461. Indeed.
(Mr du Guerny) Which in the rural areas would be quite
new for them. I am really not quite sure what it would involve.
The only example, since you use the word "brigade",
is an army and that on the AIDS side is certainly not a success
in most countries. They are among the most highly infected segments
of the population. One would have to be extremely careful that
such a thing would not happen with the youth brigade. As to changing
the face of epidemiology and the strategies in that area, yes,
it does have serious implications because there are re-emerging
diseases. As you say, malaria and TB are certainly going to become
much more important. The dangers are that drug resistance develops
and these diseases become much more costly to deal with effectively,
particularly these dangers exist with rural populations where
there is not the infrastructure to ensure that rather constraining
medication systems have to be enforced. The classic thing with
TB is people feel better rather quickly and then stop taking the
antibiotics and there is no way to enforce it. Then TB can become
resistant and since it is contagious could have very serious consequences.
I think, again, the future of disease could be quite different
from what we have known from the last few decades. You really
have to ask the epidemiologists all this.
Chairman
462. Thank you very much indeed for a very valuable
evidence session to us. We would like to thank you very much indeed
for coming all the way from Rome to give us your evidence which
is, as I said, extremely valuable to us in this study of what
we should do and how we should intervene to help the terrible
scourge that AIDS is presenting to the agricultural community
and to the whole population. Thank you very much indeed, Mr du
Guerny, for coming and giving us your help.
(Mr du Guerny) Thank you. It has been a pleasure.
I hope it has been helpful.
Chairman: Yes, it has been very helpful
indeed.
Ann Clwyd: Very interesting.
Chairman: Yes, very interesting. Thank
you.
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