§ Mr. DalyellTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the letter to the hon. Member for Linlithgow of 25 February, what discussions she has had with the Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Campaign, the FAO and the Inter-African Bureau of Animal Resources on Tsetse control and eradication programmes; and if she will make a statement. [74194]
§ Clare ShortOn 9 and 10 September 2002, DFID hosted a meeting in Edinburgh under the aegis of its Animal Heath Research Programme, entitled "Tsetse Control—the Next 100 Years". The meeting brought together representatives of over thirty stakeholder organisations to the Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign (PATTEC), including DFID, senior officials of the Inter-African Bureau of Animal Resources, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the wider research community, the European Commission and PATTEC itself.
The Regional Co-ordinator of PATTEC, Dr. John Kabayo, has asked to meet DFID's Chief Natural Resources Adviser when he is next in London. Apart from this we are not aware of any formal request from PATTEC to hold discussions with bilateral donors, although we have made it clear that we would be pleased to discuss the campaign's preliminary proposals at a technical level.
661WDFID is in regular dialogue with the FAO's Animal Production and Health Division and with the Inter-African Bureau of Animal Resources through our ongoing programmes of support to those organisations. Neither has substantively raised the issue of PATTEC with us.
We remain unconvinced that the scientific and economic theories for the eradication of tsetse flies from Africa on which PATTEC's original proposals were founded are yet proven. Our view is that efforts should focus on tsetse and trypanosomiasis control rather than eradication for the foreseeable future. This is consistent with the consensus of the Edinburgh meeting and more recent statements by the Programme Against African Trypanosomiasis (PAAT) and by PATTEC.