27th November, 2002
Dr. Henry:I move:
That Seanad Éireann recognises the value of Ireland's aid to developing countries, monetary and otherwise, and calls on the Minister for Finance to maintain our commitment to it.
I welcome the Minister of State. I hope he will not consider me to be repetitive because he was present when I last raised this issue in the House on 6 February 2000. The importance of overseas development aid is a subject dear to my heart and also, I am sure, to his.
This country does much good work in this area. On the last occasion I raised the issue in the House I asked the Government to achieve the United Nations target for overseas development aid of 0.7% of GNP. We have now reached 0.4% of GNP, which is well up the scale of givers. A large number of richer countries have yet to achieve that level. I hope this debate will encourage the Minister of State when he seeks increases in aid.
When the House last debated this issue I had just returned from a visit to Uganda and Zambia, organised by the International Planned Parenthood Federation. I thanked the organisation for sending me because it was a great help to see things at first hand. The Minister has visited both countries since then and I have had the good fortune to be sponsored by that organisation to visit Ethiopia, another country to which we give special bilateral aid.
I am always impressed by the practical value of the involvement of Ireland Aid, both in the bilateral projects and the United Nations agencies it supports, including UNFPA, UNAIDS and UNICEF. The latter is supported at a multilateral level. The value for money they achieve is impressive, as is the reception they receive from local people and the way they deal with them. I am also pleased at their greater co-operation with other countries who give bilateral aid, for example, with Norway in Ethiopia, and with the various NGOs who are trying to establish systems on the ground.
The Medical Missionaries of Mary were the first organisation from this country to become involved in safe motherhood. They established splendid hospitals in Africa 50 to 60 years ago, especially in Nigeria, where they showed it was possible to reduce maternal mortality rates if the proper medical systems were in place. Despite the enormous work done by women in developing countries, especially in agriculture, there is little respect for their position or their health. They are very undervalued, although decreasing maternal and infant mortality rates would improve the economy of the countries concerned.
Ireland's maternal mortality rates are among the best in the world, but in developing countries a woman has between a one in ten and a one in 20 chance of dying from a condition associated with pregnancy or childbirth. Between 500,000 and 700,000 women die every year in such circumstances, that is, one every minute approximately. In the course of this debate between 100 and 121 women will die, the vast majority of them in the underdeveloped world. Many will be teenagers or older women who already have large families. With the death of these mothers the likelihood of their children under the age of five years surviving is decimated. That is a great tragedy for the countries concerned.
The decline in maternal mortality in this country did not happen by chance or because of socio-economic improvements. We managed to diminish puerperal sepsis, an infection associated with childbirth, which is still a very serious cause of death in the developing countries. It can be immediately alleviated with an adequate supply of antibiotics. We need to address that area.
Approximately 20% of women die from bleeding. We have been associated with the establishment of safe blood banks and this must continue. It has been very important in the cities in developing countries because the death rates there is half to a third of that in rural areas. We must use our expertise in these areas to show how improvements can be made.
High blood pressure is another major cause of death. Our involvement in the training of traditional birth attendants can greatly help. For example, by giving them a stick they can detect women under five feet and seek to have them referred to the nearest hospital. Women can also be given watches to time the length of labour and seek medical help if it goes beyond eight hours. Obstructed labour is an appalling cause of maternal mortality. There are no women in the House tonight apart from the Clerk Assistant and myself but one can imagine that taking three or four days to die in obstructed labour must be one of the most appalling deaths one could think of. Some 8% of women in the developing world die in obstructed labour.
We should address issues like that with the expertise we have and, particularly in this area, discourage teenage pregnancy because these girls are not mature. The countries involved tried to raise the age of marriage to 18 but there is a tradition of very early marriage. If a girl marries at 12 and tries to deliver her first child at 14, the results are disastrous. Another group who unfortunately run into a great deal of trouble also are those who have very large families. Complications of pregnancy and the older age of these women can cause many problems.
This is an area where we need to support family planning. Many of these women do not have access to family planning clinics and anything we can do through the non-governmental organisations who set them up, and in terms of family planning supplies, will be helpful. Condoms are not very popular in Africa for cultural reasons, but many African women are most enthusiastic about long-term injectable contraceptives, especially in rural areas because they only have to go to a clinic once every three months. I wish they had a better choice of treatment but that appears to be one of the most important to them. It is essential to try to get teenagers to delay their first pregnancy since many of them do not understand, because of the cultural conditions in their country, that the dangers greatly increase at that time.
There is a major problem also with unsafe abortion in these countries and their legislation on abortion varies. What we can do, however, is try to ensure that these women who usually die from exsanguination and infection get blood, if that is what they need, and that there is a supply of antibiotics to treat them. Without antibiotics they will die from these dreadful abortions.
It is important to remember also that those who work with these women have the added risk of dealing with people at least 20% of whom are HIV positive. Today's newspapers highlight the report from UNAIDS which states that currently there are 42 million people in the world infected with HIV. That is a horrific figure.
I have visited clinics in Africa where the workers did not have any rubber gloves, which is not fair. When President Bush took away the $34 million voted by Congress for the UNFPA, I wish he had sent $34 million worth of rubber gloves to Africa because they would have saved many people from putting themselves in danger by working with these infected women and men.
Good work is being done on microbicides, which are very simple compounds, far too simple for the pharmaceutical companies to take them up. Some of them appear to be made from seaweed, which I am sure would have enormously impressed our grandmothers who told us about the value carrageen moss. This country has put money towards research into microbicides which, if used vaginally, appear to block the transmission of the HIV virus. Another area we need to address is the very high level of sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis and gonorrhoea.
I commend the Minister of State on what he is trying to do and the great effort he has made in visiting these clinics. I do not need to tell him how good they are; he has seen them for himself. He has also seen that we are socially acceptable in these places because we do not go there to tell these people what to do. We try to be as co-operative as possible. I hope the Minister will do the best he can to ensure that the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, reaches into his long pocket and provides as much money as he possibly can to continue this excellent work. I thank Senator Quinn in advance for seconding the motion.
Dr. Henry:I cannot tell the Minister of State how pleased I am with his speech and the speeches of all the Senators who contributed on this motion. I was not being foolish in tabling a motion in Private Members' time and used the given wording with two things in mind. First, I am a great believer in the proverb "Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí." That was for the benefit of the Minister of State because it is extremely hard to speak after someone who is close to canonisation. Deputy O'Donnell is, as far as I know, the first woman and lay person to be asked by the Irish Medical Organisation to give the Doolin lecture. Canonisation is in sight when one receives that honour from the Irish medical profession. The second reason for the wording of the motion is that I did want to get all Senators to support it, particularly Government Senators, because I will not be at the Fianna Fáil or Progressive Democrats deliberations. I want Senators to remember what they said tonight at those deliberations.
I did use the word "maintain" carefully because there has been funny arithmetic between last year and this year. I am certainly anxious about the figure of €30 million which no longer seems to pertain to this year but to next year. I will leave it to the Minister of State to find out.
I had been reassured about emergency humanitarian aid. I really was very proud of this country when I saw the situation in Ethiopia concerning the world food bank. There is not starvation in the whole of Ethiopia, there is plenty of food in some parts. What have we done? We bought sorghum and beans in a place where there was plenty and brought them to Tigre, where they are now ready for the famine. Forgive me for saying this, but the United States sent in wheat, which is not eaten in the area. They would not mill it. The area in question has no mills for wheat, nor can it be done by hand. Therefore, we should never belittle our efforts because they are good, not just in monetary terms, but also because thought is going into them.
I am glad the issue of the UNFPA arose because we were all taught that one should not bear false witness. That is fine if applied to people, but one has to be careful in applying it to organisations. I am sure Senator Lydon will realise that I am the last person in the world who would be coercing women to do anything, not to mind something so grim as abortion or sterilisation.
8 o'clock
I am pleased Senator Hanafin referred to the Cairo conference, which the Minister of State and I attended. The then Minister, Deputy Howlin, and the Minister of State proposed to the European Union that while abortion could never be considered a family planning method, the dire consequences of unsafe abortion had to be addressed. That is the reason I raised the importance of ensuring adequate supplies of antibiotics. In the course of this debate between 25 and 30 women will have died due to unsafe abortion, which is probably a conservative estimate. We have persevered with this view and are now on the executive of the UNFPA where we have huge moral responsibility. I am sure the Department is weary of replying to all our questions. Deputy Gay Mitchell recently submitted one which, once again, deals with the reaffirmation of the position of the UNFPA.
The position of China is difficult. It is a very big country with a draconian policy in this area. I have spoken to some Chinese people involved in family planning, including the vice-chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress of China, the state family planning commissioner and a member of the country's family planning association. In addition to visits by Americans, three Members of Parliament at Westminster have visited, led by Christine McCafferty. They met an Irish nun who had been 40 years in China. She said the UNFPA did nothing but good, sometimes in trying circumstances. The delegation's report will be placed on the Internet at the end of this week. The website address is www.appg/popdevrh.org.uk.
Senator Quinn rightly said trade would be much better than aid. However, it is necessary to consider the level of support for the Common Agricultural Policy and the situation regarding globalisation, which is good abroad but bad at home. These issues will be with us for a long time.
I wish the Minister of State the best of luck. He will make Senators across all parties very angry if he does not succeed in maintaining aid at its current levels. Deputy O'Donnell used to say she had to sit on the aid nest like a hen. I will not try to devise a masculine simile, but I am sure the Minister of State will do his best. I thank Senators for their support.
Question put and agreed to.
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