MINISTERS and officials of the World Health Organisation began a week-long meeting in Geneva on Monday, set to include talks on bioterrorism and access to drugs for poor countries.
WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland told delegates in her 2001 report to the World Health Assembly that the past two years had seen some ”promising developments” on access to essential medicines.
”Many companies are now offering differential prices for their products with substantial discounts (and below-cost prices) for least developed countries,” she said.
Delegates of 191 WHO member states will focus during the talks, due to run until Saturday, on last month’s decision by the Geneva-based UN health agency to include general anti-Aids treatments on its list of essential medicines for the first time.
In the wake of the anthrax scare in the United States last year, they will also tackle the issue of harm caused by the deliberate use of biological and chemical agents.
Brundtland said that the past year had seen the start of a ”real change” in the collective ability to confront the Aids epidemic.
Governments and civil society are focusing on the devastating effects caused by the disease and are working together in the fight, she said.
”Taboos are starting to erode. Governments are confronting the epidemic with a new openness,” she said. Civil society has contributed to improving knowledge and
strengthening the ”moral imperative” for action, she added.
Some 40-million people were living with HIV/Aids at the end of 2001.
The WHO meeting’s agenda also features mental health, the eradication of smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria and polio. ? Sapa-AFP