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Experts Mull Cheap Drugs for Poor at Norway TalksBy: Reuters Oslo - Representatives of governments, drug companies and lobby groups met in Norway on Monday to discuss ways to provide the world's poorest people with low-cost medicines to treat AIDS and other crippling diseases. The talks, jointly sponsored by the World Heath Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization, come a week before a landmark court case between pharmaceutical firms and the South African government over access to drugs reopens in Pretoria. South Africa and other developing countries accuse drug companies of charging too much for medicines to treat AIDS and diseases such as cholera and malaria that kill millions every year. The industry says the prices help fund future research. ``This is the first time that such a wide range of people are coming around the same table to discuss the issue,'' said Jon Liden, spokesman for WHO. ``We're discussing a range of infectious diseases where there are drugs, but they are not available partly because of their prices.'' The meeting, involving 80 health experts from around the world, is being held at Hoesbjoer, about 130 km north of Oslo, and will last until Wednesday. WHO chief Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Norwegian premier, will lead the talks. Representatives of drug firms such as GlaxoSmithKline, the world's biggest supplier of HIV/AIDS drugs, are attending along with senior officials from the United States, the European Union and developing nations including South Africa, Uganda, Brazil and Thailand. Others attending include a U.S. man suffering from AIDS and representatives of the medical aid charity "Medecins Sans Frontieres", winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. Liden said delegates would examine ways to help financing and to bolster health systems in developing nations to enable them to distribute medicines. ``No matter how cheap many drugs become, you have to find ways to finance them and distribute them,'' he said. Another issue is how to prevent cheaper drugs sent to developing nations from being re-imported to rich nations, a key concern to the drug companies. The meetings are closed to the media. ``There are no proposals on the table and this is not a group with any authority to discuss or agree on government plans,'' Linden said. Norwegian Development Minister Anne Kristin Sydnes said in a statement that Norway was hosting the talks partly because of its concerns with AIDS in Africa. ``In Africa alone, 25 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS, and five million people were infected around the world last year,'' she said. Sydnes added that one estimate was that it would cost $10 billion a year to fight AIDS and other diseases in Africa. She said that if the cost were spread around all those living in rich nations, it would be just $10 each. In South Africa, 39 companies are challenging a 1997 law allowing the Health Ministry to import low-cost medicines in a landmark case that resumes on April 18. The firms argue that planned South African legislation will infringe their patent rights by allowing the ministry to override patents by importing or manufacturing cheaper generic or copy-cat medicines. South Africa, which has the world's highest number of HIV infections, insists its Medicines Act is fundamental to its constitutional duty to provide health care to all its people.
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