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Honourable Minister for Health,
Honourable Dr. Jorge Sampaio,
Honourable Mrs. Adélcia Pires,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very pleased to be here today, during this summer evening, for the closure of the Forum concerning health issues in the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP).

I wish to address a special word of welcome to Dr. Jorge Sampaio for his exertion in the issues that so greatly concern us: we are not nearly sufficient in number to find the scientific and humanly adequate remedies.

I was happily and hopefully rewarded when finding such a large number of highly qualified participants in this Forum.

These are relevant individualities in their respective countries, since they have proven their value in the various organizations where they carry out their fight: Foundations, Pharmaceutical laboratories, Universities, Hospitals, Merciful Institutions, and Entrepreneurial and Non-Governmental Organizations.

This can only mean that we are heedful, that we are mustered, that we will achieve.

We live in an era of globalization which, to us Portuguese, is not really a novelty, since we invented the first global village in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The wonder which accompanied our first travels may have died out, since history accelerated and us with it.

Everything travels fast now: the good and the evil.

Aids, tuberculosis, malaria, with the enormous number of people infected around the world, are a great concern. They are contagious, they persist and they grow, notwithstanding the large investments we have made to wipe them out.

We have already understood that in this field, as in so many others, nothing is really effective if it does not include social concern.

This was dealt with today in this Forum. People from so many countries with a common language and a common will met to show us the path that must travelled by the civil society to achieve the objectives which we all know are required to change the world.

And we do want to change the world for the better.

We have to fight in order that adequate treatments reach the people that need them and we well know, for several reasons, why this at times is not happening.

We have already advanced much in the area of Aids treatment, after the eighties of last century, for instance, when it seemed we knew nothing about the plague which had befallen us.

On the other hand, we have actually witnessed a new situation for which we had not been made ready.

There is now the risk of the emergence of yellow fever and other haemorrhagic fevers in areas of the globe where that was out of the question a few years ago.

We know that there are perfectly avoidable tragic health situations by improving sanitary conditions and carrying out inoculation campaigns.

As usual, the children and the aged are the most stricken, the weakest links of the peoples already weakened by various disasters.

Mobility is a characteristic of our times and we are attending a Forum in which this makes a lot of sense, due to a rich diversity within the same linguistic community.

But it also raises new challenges which must be answered. We can also say that borders no longer exist when dealing with health.

The rapid transport of people and goods and climate change are also globalizing health issues.

And it is this new reality which we must face.

Combating sickness demands material and human means, demands cooperation between institutions and States.

This Forum to discuss health issues in the CPLP Civil Society is an effective example of the will to develop means of cooperation for health issues in our Community.

This cooperation in which Portugal, within the scope of CPLP and UNO, has come to the fore, involves actions in the fields of training technicians in the prevention of sickness and in health education.

But, in addition to the cooperation between States and institutions, the extremely important role of solidarity in mustering the promotion of common benefit must be emphasized.

I know that this Forum has far ranging objectives, all of them very necessary and very difficult: Improvement in health, reduction in child mortality, extinction of hunger and poverty, access to learning, promotion of equality in kind, just to mention a few.

I am certain that the conclusions reached in this Forum will be an important contribution for the promotion of the essential values on which a healthier and friendlier society in the area of our Community is based.

Thank you all for coming here today and for your work on behalf of this common cause.