Plan to Fight AIDS Overseas Is Foundering

[HydroAddict]

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: March 28, 2004

Three years after the United Nations declared a worldwide offensive against AIDS and 14 months after President Bush promised $15 billion for AIDS treatment in poor countries, shortages of money and battles over patents have kept antiretroviral drugs from reaching more than 90 percent of the poor people who need them.

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While Mr. Bush promised in his 2003 State of the Union address to spend $15 billion over five years on AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, his budget requests have fallen far short of that goal. For the most recent donation to the Global Fund, he requested only $200 million, although Congress authorized $550 million.

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Last October, a foundation organized by former President Bill Clinton announced an agreement with Indian and South African generic makers to sell the drugs for $140 per patient per year if large orders were guaranteed, payment was in cash and the drug maker did not have to pay the legal and lobbying costs of getting each drug licensed in each country.

In January, Mr. Clinton announced that he had brokered another price-cut deal with five companies making AIDS tests. One of the companies, Becton, Dickinson & Company, dropped the cost of its CD-4 count, which measures immune cells, to as little as $3, from a high of $10.

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This is just sickening and depressing the way Bush treats the world.

I snipped-in those last two paragraphs to show the world how ex-presidents should act (like Clinton and Carter), to help mankind. Unlike Bush I who has only whored himself post-office to HURT mankind (Carlyle, etc.).

[xchrom]

1. you can't fight corporate facist feudal holdings

i.e. pharmaceutical territory, with a corporate facist in charge.