intellectual property agreement, called TRIPS, grants poor
countries the right to produce low-cost generic versions
of patented medicines in 2001, but still bars them from importing drugs
from generic drug producers like Brazil, South Africa and India.
Poor safety led to Irish 'bad blood'
After two years of hearings, the Dublin High Court's investigation into
how the Irish blood bank infected 260 haemophiliacs with HIV and Hepatitis
C in the 1980's has sharply criticised safety standards and the bank's
failure to inform those it had infected until years later.
Aids cases down 11 per cent in EU
Latest figures show that the number of people diagnosed with Aids fell
11 per cent in the European Union in 2001. The EU's statistics agency
Eurostat said 8,210 new cases of Aids were reported last year compared
with 9,197 in 2000. The highest European rate is in Portugal, with 105.8
cases per million inhabitants, followed by Spain, France and Italy. The
UK rate is now 11.3 cases per million, with the lowest European rates
in the Netherlands and Finland at 2.8 and 3.3 cases per million respectively.
page 6 of 7
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Maire Bopp Dupont at a recent Pacific youth conference in Fiji
Sarah Boseley writing about drug patent rights in The Guardian
"Poverty, ignorance, unemployment and desperation are reasons why HIV is spreading so rapidly."
Sweden's Queen Sylvia at the 4th European Aids Conference,Vilnius, Lithuania
