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January 16, 2000, Sunday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 11; Column 1; Foreign
Desk
LENGTH: 581 words
HEADLINE: France Presses the U.N. to Help Poor Nations
Get AIDS Drugs
BYLINE: By BARBARA CROSSETTE
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 14
BODY:
As more international attention focuses on an
AIDS epidemic spreading out of control, France is prodding the United Nations to
find ways to make cheaper drugs available to poor countries, where treatment is
beyond the means of most people who need it.
The Clinton administration
also supports the cause championed by France. But officials and AIDS experts
contend that drug companies have been resistant to pleas that they alter their
pricing policies or donate medicines to poor countries.
Alain Dejammet,
France's representative at the United Nations, proposed during an all-day
Security Council meeting on the AIDS crisis in Africa last Monday that a
three-way conference be convened to bring together rich nations, their
pharmaceutical companies and representatives of poorer countries in desperate
need of affordable medicines.
Mr. Dejammet said the interests of
pharmaceutical companies, which fear the erosion of their patents on drugs
developed at enormous costs in research and testing, would have to be taken into
account.
He said that for this reason, France was proposing that the
companies and countries involved in both buying and selling drugs get together
to discuss how to avoid more confrontations over intellectual property rights.
He said in an interview Thursday that given the huge numbers of AIDS
cases in the developing world, treatment should not be forgotten in the rush to
support prevention efforts -- many of them more educational than medical -- and
the development of an AIDS vaccine. The 21 countries with the
world's highest H.I.V. infection rates are all in Africa, and these nations are
also among the world's poorest.
Vice President Al Gore, speaking at the
same council session on Monday, also raised the question of how to make
medicines more readily available, an issue President Clinton had addressed at
the contentious World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in December.
"We are also committed to helping poor countries gain access to
affordable medicines, including those for H.I.V./AIDS," Mr. Gore told the
Security Council. "Last month, the president announced a new approach to ensure
that we take public health crises into account when applying U.S. trade policy.
We will cooperate with our trading partners to assure that U.S. trade policies
do not hinder the efforts to respond to health crises."
Mr. Gore said
the United States would add $150 million to next year's budget for fighting
AIDS. A third of that amount would go to the Global Alliance
for Vaccines and Immunizations, which sponsors medical research
and works on the distribution of drugs to the third world. In total, the Clinton
administration is seeking to make $325 million available for the American
contribution to the worldwide campaign against AIDS.
Mr. Gore learned
last year how complicated efforts to aid poorer nations can be when negotiations
with pharmaceutical companies are involved. He drew protesters to his campaign
rallies after he presented the position of American drug companies in talks with
South Africa.
The talks concerned a 1997 South African law that allowed
imports of cheaper, but unlicensed, copies of American drugs for AIDS and opened
the way for South African manufacturers to produce generic versions of their
own.
Forty pharmaceutical companies responded by first lobbying the
South Africans and then filing a lawsuit. The suit was suspended in September
when South Africa said that the law would be re-examined.
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