EU keeps supporting poor countries, says research commissioner

Despite the crisis, the EU will maintain funding for public health and food security in developing countries, the research commissioner has said.

“In times of economic crisis, the EU’s determination to help developing countries is strengthened, not diminished,” Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said after a meeting with philanthropist Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on 23 January. In particular, the Commission and the foundation jointly fund the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership, which aims to speed up potential breakthroughs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.