USTR "intimidating" Brazil over HIV/AIDS drugs

US President George W Bush should stop the US Trade Representative from"trying to intimidate Brazil from providing cheap generic AIDS drugs," says Raymond Offenheiser, president of the Oxfam America aid agency. "Brazil has proven you can treat very poor people successfully, their program is cited for excellence by the World Bank, the United Nations and medical professionals, and the USA is trying to shut it down," he noted.

Last month, the UN Human Rights Commission unanimously approved a Brazilian resolution which stated that access to medicines is a human right. Only the USA abstained from the vote.

Meantime, Paulo Teixeira, director of the Brazilian government's AIDS program, is to present a three-point plan at next month's UN AIDS summit in New York (Marketletter May 14) which will call for differential drug pricing based on the purchasing country's socio economic conditions, safeguards to protect individual countries' patent laws and the establishment of a global fund to tackle AIDS, reports the Gazeta Mercantil.