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U.N. agencies said working on cheaper drugs planBy: Reuters Geneva- United Nations agencies are working on a programme aimed at ensuring that public and private funds destined to improve health systems in poorer countries are more effective, diplomats said on Thursday. They said the idea was agreed during a meeting last month in Nairobi between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and heads of some of the agencies. Some details of the plan might emerge next week in New York at a gathering of the United States' United Nations Association, set for April 19, according to the envoys. Agency heads, including Gro Harlem Brundtland of the World Health Organisation (WHO), are expected to address the session. The programme would take into account ideas raised at an expert workshop near Oslo this week on how to get cheaper drugs to countries, especially in Africa, racked with major diseases, the diplomats said. At a news conference after the workshop, organised by the WHO jointly with the World Trade Organisation, Brundtland urged the creation of a multi-billion dollar fund to tackle this problem. She said richer countries should bear the burden of the funding but called on recipient states to take on the responsibility of ensuring better use of their resources so that health and education got more attention. A WHO spokesman said remarks at the news conference by Brundtland -- on a crackly radio link from the town of Osbjor -- about cutting military budgets referred to developing countries and not potential donor powers. The former Norwegian prime minister said the experts in Osbjor, who included representatives of the pharmaceutical industry and non-governmental organisations active in developing countries, agreed that a balanced approach was vital to the health crisis in many poor states. This would include ensuring lower-priced drugs and medicines were available in those countries but also a major effort to build up their dilapidated and sometimes nearly non-existent health systems. Such an effort, she said, would need several billion dollars a year, and could come from governments and private institutions. ``It needs to be a broader fund than just covering AIDS,'' she said. ``We have a broader range of really critical diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and childhood illnesses which really need the same kind of attention.''
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