may07-4

BEIJING, May 23 (Reuters) - China's drug watchdog said quality supervisors would be dispatched to all of the country's blood manufacturers to ensure products were free of diseases like HIV and hepatitis, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

"Provincial drug authorities have assigned 84 such supervisors to 33 blood products manufacturers and 32 vaccine makers so far," Xinhua said, quoting an unnamed official at the State Food and Drug Administration, as saying.

Plasma procured would need to be stored for 90 days and screened for viruses such as HIV or Hepatitis C before being used in blood products, Xinhua said.

Blood transfusion is still a major channel for HIV-AIDS transmission in China, and patient infections from blood-based drugs made with tainted plasma are reported sporadically by local media.

In January, the government suspended the production and sale of a blood-based drug used to treat immune system deficiencies after users were feared to have contracted hepatitis C from contaminated plasma.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers in the central province of Henan were infected in the 1990s through schemes in which people sold blood to unsanitary, often state-run health clinics, making the province the centre of China's AIDS epidemic.

Authorities have moved to clean up the country's blood collecting centres in recent years, but underground blood selling has persisted.

One million people get AIDS drugs via Global Fund

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 5-year-old organization that leads international efforts against three leading diseases said on Tuesday more than a million HIV-infected people have received life-extending drugs thanks to its efforts.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, launched by the Group of 8 industrialized nations and financed largely by the U.S. and European governments, said it is exceeding its targets.

The organization said as of May 1 between 1 million and 1.1 million people had received AIDS drugs through its efforts, up from 544,000 a year ago.

It said the number of tuberculosis cases treated also doubled from a year ago and the number getting insecticide-treated bed nets to protect against the bite of the mosquito that spreads malaria more than doubled.

"So far we estimate that the programs funded by the Global Fund have saved the lives 1.8 million people -- that is the lives of 3,000 people a day who would otherwise be dead from AIDS, TB and malaria," said Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, the fund's executive director.

The group devotes much of its efforts to Africa, the continent hardest hit by all three diseases.

More than 2.8 million people have been treated for TB and around 30 million families received bed nets under Global Fund fund efforts since it started its work in 2002, the group said.

Kazatchkine told reporters the fund has provided about $3.5 billion to fight the three diseases. About 30 percent of the money comes from the United States and 55 percent from EU countries, he said.

But he said much remains to be done, and that the fund is seeking $6 billion by 2010.

More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since the incurable disease, which devastates the body's immune system, was first recognized about a quarter century ago. About 40 million are now infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

Malaria kills about a million people annually, mostly young children. Tuberculosis kills an estimated 1.6 million people a year.

The Global Fund detailed its efforts in 136 countries before a meeting of G8 heads of state in Germany in June.

Coca Cola give Chinese migrant workers AIDS awareness playing cards

Coca Cola (China) Beverages Ltd. has launched a program to give 100,000 sets of playing cards with AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria prevention knowledge to Chinese migrant workers.

The poker cards will be handed out at railway stations and construction sites in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou in July, said a statement from the company.

The company also plans to cooperate with the Chinese Foundation for Prevention of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) and AIDS to hand out AIDS prevention cards in Henan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, where the incidence of AIDS is high.

Migrant workers are mainly young men who are either unmarried or away from their spouses most of the year, leading some to seek the services of prostitutes, which in turn makes them vulnerable to HIV infection.

Statistics from Beijing's Health Bureau show that migrant workers accounted for about 80 percent of Beijing's new HIV carriers last year.

China has 200 million migrant workers, of which more than 120 million work in cities. The remainder work in towns.

China is at a key stage in its fight against AIDS/HIV. A report from the International Labor Organization estimates that China could lose five million laborers by 2015 if it fails to take effective action.

China reported 183,733 HIV and AIDS cases in 2006, up 30 percent from 2005. The increase was attributed partly to improvements in reporting.

Experts estimate there are actually 650,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in China.

"The Chinese government ought to be grateful to Hu and Zeng for educating and assisting people living with HIV/AIDS, but instead it is punishing them," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Their work isn't a threat to national security, but the government's attempt to stifle AIDS activists is a threat to public health."

Minutes before the couple was to board a flight for a two-month trip to Europe, Hu and Zeng were detained by eight police officers – two of whom filmed the proceedings. The police at no point provided any official documents showing the basis for Hu and Zeng's house arrest and travel ban.

Hu, a human rights activist who has monitored and reported on arrests and harassment of high-profile individuals, spent 214 days under house arrest between August 2006 and March 2007. The couple made a documentary film about their house arrest, "Prisoners of Freedom City," which records their surveillance by state security and police over that seven-month period.

Last week, Time magazine named Zeng as one of the world's 100 most influential people. Her blog documents the routine surveillance and harassment by security forces that China's activists and dissidents must endure.

"I had never expected that the police would restrict me as well as Hu Jia," Zeng wrote on her blog. "I am already three months pregnant. What is to be feared from me and my child?" She expressed her astonishment that the authorities would subject both her and her husband to house arrest for legally pursuing their rights of free expression and association.

In April, Hu released a transcript of a conversation he had with a prominent human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, in which Gao claimed that he had been forced to "confess" under torture. Gao received a suspended sentence in December for a charge of "subversion" in a trial that fell short of international fair-trial standards.

The house arrest order confines Hu and Zeng to their home in Beijing and severely limits their freedom of movement and association, as well as their ability to contact friends and relatives.

"China's systematic use of house arrest and state security charges against human rights defenders seriously undermines the government's claims that it respects the rights of its citizens," said Adams. "The Chinese government should immediately end the practice of house arrest and the use of dubious, politically motivated charges against activists."

House arrest is just one of the many administrative measures that Chinese authorities can deploy against dissidents and human rights activists without having to formally charge and prosecute them under Chinese law. The Chinese government appears to be increasing its use of house arrest on grounds of loosely defined state security crimes as a means of quelling public expressions of dissent in the run-up to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Hu stated earlier this year that he was planning to "push the space for freedoms, especially freedom of expression," in the period leading up to the Beijing Olympics in August 2008. But with a spate of arrests of activists, lawyers and journalists in the past two years, China is moving in the opposite direction. Despite its recent, more forceful response to the AIDS epidemic, the authorities have also repeatedly harassed AIDS activists, most recently detaining 79-year-old Dr. Gao Yaojie in February.

"With the Olympics on the horizon, Beijing should know that its actions are being closely watched by the rest of the world," Adams said. "Is the house arrest of two internationally known activists really the image that China wants to project to the world?"

Women's rights key to Africa AIDS crisis

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Improving women's rights could boost the battle against AIDS in southern African countries, where women are often forced into risky sex by male partners or economic desperation, a new report said on Friday.

Physicians for Human Rights said its study of 2,000 women in Botswana and Swaziland showed inequality and gender discrimination were major factors behind a pandemic which has seen the two countries struggle with the worst AIDS crises in the world.

"If we are to reduce the continuing, extraordinary HIV prevalence in Botswana and Swaziland, particularly among women, the countries' leaders need to enforce women's legal rights," study co-author Karen Leiter said in a statement.

Almost 25 million Africans are infected with the HIV virus, giving the continent the worst AIDS burden in the world. Women make up 75 percent of HIV-positive Africans aged between 15-25.

The PHR study concentrated on the two African countries with the highest HIV prevalence rates -- Swaziland, where an estimated 33 percent of adults are infected, and Botswana, where about 24 percent carry the virus.

Researchers conducted random surveys on gender attitudes and sexual behavior and concluded that greater social and economic inequality between the sexes directly correlated to the HIV risk faced by African women.

"Despite the differences in the two countries, the women in the samples have very similar demographics ... they were poorer, had a greater number of dependents, were less educated and were less food sufficient," Leiter said.

"They are compelled often by their circumstances to engage in sexual behavior that raises their HIV risk."

Economic dependence on men meant that women often lose control of their sexual choices, including whether or not to use a condom, while social inequality meant that men and women are held to different standards of behavior when it comes to multiple sexual partners, the report said.

In Botswana, for example, researchers found that survey participants who reported higher levels of discriminatory beliefs about the role of women were almost three times as likely to have had unprotected sex with a non-primary partner on the previous year.

U.S.-based PHR, which was a co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, said African governments and traditional social leaders were failing to ensure existing legal and constitutional protections for women's rights.

In particular, both Botswana and Swaziland need to work to end discrimination against women in marriage, inheritance, property and employment rights and boost efforts to end domestic and sexual violence against women.

KATHMANDU, 27 May 2007 (IRIN) - In the remote Accham district of Nepal, which for years has supplied cheap migrant labour to India's bustling commercial city, Mumbai, villages are waking up to the impact of HIV.

In the impoverished Ridikot village, nearly 800km northwest of the capital, Kathmandu, eight-year old Rajan Biswakarma takes out the only photograph of his parents, who both died of AIDS-related illnesses last year.

"It's really hard for him. I can't bear the pain myself losing my only son," said his grief-stricken grandfather, 67-year old Prasa, who has to work hard to feed and pay for the education of his three grandchildren.

According to a local NGO, Gangotri Rural Development Forum (GRDF), which supports HIV-positive people, the numbers of orphans and vulnerable children are steadily rising in this district, the centre of a localised epidemic in an otherwise low prevalence country.

In the nearby Kakadset village, there are nearly 20 orphans who lost their parents to an AIDS-related illness, and barely a few kilometres away in Payal Village Development Committee (VDC), the basic sub-district administrative unit, there are over 115 orphans in similar circumstances.

"It's a terrible tragedy that children suffer from extreme poverty and loss of their parents in addition to being left without support," said anti-AIDS activist Rupa Auji from GRDF. She added that some orphans and widows were taken in by relatives with enough income and farms, while many had to migrate to other villages to work as domestic servants, porters and farm labourers.

"Death seems a better idea than surviving with such misery," said 33-year old widow, Mansara Bhul, who is HIV-positive. A few months ago, she doused ago herself and her three children in kerosene and was about to strike a light, but was stopped by a neighbour who heard the children screaming. Suicide attempts are becoming common among villagers, say NGOs working in the region.

Bhul was kicked out of her house by her relatives after her husband died of an AIDS-related illness and now receives financial assistance from GRDF and the international aid agency Save the Children.

With no hope of getting any help from the government, HIV-positive widows in the area have formed the Single Women's Group with support from organisations like Social Volunteers Against AIDS (SOVAA) and GRDF.

There are now 20 such groups in 20 VDCs with nearly 200 members. "Although we have no hope of surviving long, we are working together to generate income," said 32-year old Kokila Bista.

Men have been leaving Accham to find jobs as porters and guards in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, for decades. Now increasingly they are returning with HIV, picked up in Mumbai's Nepali brothels.

The scale of migration is staggering. SOVAA found that all the men from nearly half of Accham's 75 VDCs, with a population of nearly 250,000, were in Mumbai, India's western port city.

"They go with dreams of becoming rich but come back infected with HIV [that] only impoverishes their families more," said local villager 17-year old Netra BK, whose brother and father are currently working in the booming city which generates 40 percent of India's foreign trade.

Health workers are concerned about the high HIV prevalence levels in Accham, and female community health volunteers are desperately trying to reach every corner of the remote district to raise awareness and support people living with the virus.

Between 2005 and 2006, nearly 20 percent of the 500 people who had come for testing at the local Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) Centre in Accham were found to be HIV-positive, according to Himalayan Association Against STI and AIDS (HAASA), a local NGO that runs the VCT facility.

Despite these figures, however, the district did not have "a single health post or hospital with antiretroviral (ARV) treatment facilities," said Krishna Rawal from HAASA.

"There are already 100 persons with HIV coming to us every week to seek our help for ARV treatment but we can do nothing but refer them to the hospitals in the cities," explained Rawal.

According to rough estimates by local NGOs, nearly 500 people have died during the last three years but their deaths have yet to be officially recorded as most of the relatives burn their dead relatives with their HIV medical reports, according to GRDF.

Nepal's HIV prevalence rate stands at 0.5 percent but UNAIDS has warned that the situation is changing rapidly, and the HIV epidemic is concentrated in two risk groups: injecting drug users, and commercial sex workers.

3,000 Cambodians demand better HIV/AIDS care

Fri May 25, 2:48 AM ET

Some 3,000 Cambodians, including 500 who are HIV-positive, took to the streets Friday to demand better HIV/AIDS care in the country, hit hardest by the disease in Southeast Asia.

"We need better access to treatment. Most HIV-positive people still lack access to even cheap... treatment," said Kong Vanny, a 42-year-old woman, who was infected by her husband.

The crowd, including Buddhist monks, university students and government officials, also lit candles to mark Cambodia's annual AIDS Memorial Day at a central park in Phnom Penh.

"We hope this event will help raise awareness of HIV/AIDS among Cambodian people," said Hor Bunleng, undersecretary of state at the National AIDS Authority, a government body tasked with tackling HIV/AIDS.

While Cambodia has made strides in battling HIV/AIDS, and has successfully slowed its once-spiralling infection rate, the country still has the highest rate of HIV in Southeast Asia.

Some 1.9 percent of the population of 13.8 million are infected with the HIV virus, and relatively few have access to treatment.

Nearly 10,000 Cambodians die of AIDS-related illnesses every year, according to the government.

India's "Queerfest" targets anti-gay law, prejudice

By Palash KumarSat May 26, 3:45 AM ET

Hundreds of India's closet gays and lesbians came out to celebrate their sexuality with the launch of a 10-day festival in New Delhi, hoping to build on a campaign against the country's strict anti-gay law.

The "Nigah QueerFest '07" kicked off late on Friday with a film screening, a lot of bonhomie and laughter -- a rarity for most Indian gays who are often scorned and persecuted for even holding hands in public.

"This festival is a celebration of our sexuality," said Gautam Bhan, a tall gay rights activist.

"We are seeking our own space through culture and at the same time, conveying our opposition to Section 377," he added, referring to the anti-gay law.

Homosexuality is a crime in India and can result in a jail term of at least 10 years.

While the British colonial-era law has rarely been enforced, activists say it has become a tool for police to harass gay and lesbian couples in order to get bribes.

If couples refuse or are unable to pay a bribe, they are often put in dingy cells, brutally beaten and humiliated.

Being called gay is widely considered an insult in a country where ancient temples, murals and other arts such as the "Kama Sutra" -- the cult book of love written by an Indian ascetic 2,000 years ago -- graphically describe gay sex.

India's flourishing Hindi film industry, Bollywood, has often used gays as characters of humor and ridicule.

Recent films which have attempted to be more sensitive towards homosexuals have been greeted with fiery protests by right wing Hindu hardliners.

The anti-gay law, which dates back to the 19th century, is now being questioned by gay rights groups who argue that not only is it an abuse of human rights but also acts as an impediment in the fight against HIV/AIDS in India.

However, the government says Indian society is not ready to legalize homosexuality. A court judgment is pending.

Activists say the festival -- which will include talks, photo exhibitions, films, performances and a candlelight vigil -- is an attempt to use culture to help society recognize the rights of India's homosexuals.

Shrenik, a filmmaker who will screen his film about the subtle flirtation between a gay male couple who try to steal a moment in a crowded bus -- a telling example of how law comes in the way of love -- said the anti-gay law has to be scrapped.

"I am sure a day will come soon when the restrictions would go and we would be able to meet like this," he said. "They can't stop us for long."

Thai AIDS patients suffer as drug squabble drags on

"It's expensive but I need ice every day," the 33-year-old said of the 12 baht ($0.37) purchase that keeps her lifesaving AIDS drug, Kaletra, from perishing in hot season temperatures nearing 40 degrees centigrade (104 F)

A version that does not need refrigeration is available in the United States and some African countries hard hit by AIDS, but not in Thailand where the army-backed government is embroiled in a patent dispute with its maker, U.S. pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories.

Abbott will not register the new version, Aluvia, until Bangkok renounces its January decision to invoke a compulsory license under world trade rules which allow governments to make or buy copycat versions of drugs for public health measures.

Thailand, which has taken similar action on another AIDS drug and a heart disease medicine in what it says is a bid to widen access for its poor, wants Abbott to cut its prices more.

The company is sticking to its last offer of $1,000 per patient a year, down from $2,200, but higher than generic versions available for $695.

"The new pills would make it easier," said Somying, whose monthly ice bill eats up nearly half the 800 baht she earns at home tying ribbons for a garland maker.

"I wouldn't have to buy ice or carry around the cooler anymore," she said outside the two-room shack she shares with her two children, including a 13-year-old son with AIDS.

Of the 8,000 Thais who need Kaletra, a so-called second-line drug for people who develop resistance to initial treatment, only 600 are receiving the drug -- and the older version at that.

Somying, who was forced to leave her cleaning job at a sausage factory due to AIDS-related illnesses, still pays 500 baht a month into an employee health plan to receive Kaletra.

Without charitable donations, Somying, who lost her husband to AIDS a decade ago, said her family would not survive.

Her son, back in school six years after he walked out when teachers tried to keep him away from other children, gets the drug through the national health scheme, which covers 80 percent of Thailand's 63 million people.

A former AIDS hotspot, Thailand has won praise for reducing infections and expanding drug treatment to 100,000 of the 580,000 Thais living with AIDS. But it now faces budget pressures as more people need treatment, including expensive second-line drugs.

Somsit Tansuphaswadikul, a doctor at Bangkok's main infectious disease hospital, said he has 30 patients on Kaletra but could treat 70 more.

"There is a quota for second-line patients because of the budget. Some patients may not get access because it's not available, so they keep on with the old regimen," he said.

The drug industry's defenders say Thailand, which is spending $100 million on HIV-AIDS programmes this year, is a middle-income nation that can afford higher drug prices.

Bangkok says health care is already its second biggest budget item after education, but it is worried about the impact on trade relations with its major partner, the United States.

Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla is in Washington this week to meet trade officials who put Thailand on a "priority watch list," citing a "weakening of respect for patents" which could open the country to trade retaliation.

"We only want access to drugs for people who have no access. We can't let them down," Mongkol told Reuters before the trip he said was aimed at countering "bad information" about his policy.

Mongkol, who acted after a coup ousted pro-business Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last year, said he may target two more drugs, not the 20-30 some reports have cited.

Mongkol has won support from health groups such as Doctors Without Borders and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, whose foundation brokers deals with generic drug makers to provide lower-priced drugs for developing nations.

"No company will live or die because of high price premiums for AIDS drugs in middle-income countries, but patients may," Clinton said in backing Thailand and Brazil, which has followed Bangkok in overriding the patent on Efavirenz, an AIDS drug made by U.S.-based Merck & Co Inc.

Its envoy in Bangkok has also criticized a campaign waged by the lobby group USA for Innovation, which has indirect links to the drug industry.

It accuses Bangkok of stealing American intellectual property for military benefit and forming part of an "axis of IP evil."

Thailand plans to hire a U.S. public relations firm to counter the attacks, but others say the slanging match should be replaced by a serious multilateral debate on how to provide affordable medicines to the world's poor.

"Drugs are not a tape or CD or something like that. We need to think about the human right to receive treatment. It's the same all over the world," Somsit said.

Ethiopia official backs AIDS treatment

By ANITA POWELL, Associated Press WriterThu May 24, 8:03 PM ET

For the past year, Yonas Tadesse has been trying to stave off the effects of HIV with a blend of science and faith — he takes anti-retroviral medicine but also drinks a liter of holy water, blessed by a priest.

The combination has long been a source of controversy in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, where many local leaders believe patients should not take both holy water and medicine. But on Wednesday, Ethiopia's top religious official gave the treatment his blessing in a country where an estimated 1.5 million people are infected with HIV.

"I am asking each and every one of them to swallow the medicine and the holy water together," Patriarch Abune Paulos told a crowd of about 250 worshippers at Addis Ababa's Entoto Mariam church. "They never conflict each other."

Although the patriarch issued a proclamation in November allowing holy water to be used in conjunction with AIDS medications, many local Orthodox priests have continued to tell patients they would have to choose between the two.

Yonas, 41, who was in the congregation Wednesday, said he was pleased to know his preferred treatment was acceptable.

"I feel better now. Before, they forbade me to take the medicine," he said of his priests. "Now they welcome it."

Donald Y. Yamamoto, the U.S. ambassador in Addis Ababa, said spiritual healing is often as important as medicine in Ethiopia, where about half the population is Orthodox Christian.

"It's an issue of faith and religion, where religion and science come together to support each other," he said.

About half of the 140 patients who take anti-retrovirals at St. Petros Hospital in Addis Ababa also drink holy water — sometimes up to a gallon per day, said Dr. Solomon Zewdu.

"There's no study out there that says it is working, but we don't want to discredit faith-based healing," he said. "All medicine should be allowed to be taken with holy water."

A patient at St. Petros, a frail 14-year-old orphan, said he was glad he was not sinning by taking medicine along with his holy water. "After I began taking the medicine," he said with a wide smile, "I'm becoming OK."

When he arrived the hospital, he weighed 45 pounds and was on the verge of death. After a few months of treatment, he is up to 60 pounds and will return to school.

The boy's caretaker asked that he not be identified because of the stigma attached to HIV.

Another patient, a woman who also did not want to give her name, pointed to another benefit.

"Now I have hope," she said, "in the holy water as well as in the medicine."

Malaysia cannot promote condoms: report

Mon May 21, 12:00 PM ET

Malaysia's health ministry cannot openly promote condom use to prevent HIV/AIDS, fearing perceptions it is advocating promiscuity in the mainly Muslim nation, reports said Monday.

The ministry's deputy director for disease control, Jalal Halil Khalil, said the government understood that condom use prevented the transmission of HIV -- cases of which are rising in Malaysia -- but could not openly support it.

"We realise that we are an Islamic country and we have to do things carefully," Jalal told the New Straits Times daily.

The health ministry earlier this year warned Malaysia could face an HIV/AIDS epidemic with the number of infected people rising fourfold to 300,000 by 2015.

Of some 75,000 people with HIV/AIDS in a population of nearly 27 million, about three-quarters are intravenous drug users, but heterosexual transmissions are growing.

Jalal admitted not being able to openly promote condoms would render prevention programmes less effective, adding the ministry was relying instead on non-government organisations (NGOs) to advocate condoms.

"It may slow down the effectiveness of prevention. It is difficult to promote the open usage of condoms," he told the Star newspaper.

"We let the NGOs do the work ... we use different ways of communicating it or else people will think we are promoting promiscuity," he said.

Sex is a taboo topic rarely discussed in public in the conservative nation, while HIV/AIDS patients suffer from social stigma.

Malaysia last year embarked on a five-year plan to curb the spread of the disease, including needle exchange programmes for drug addicts, free antiretroviral drugs and drug substitution therapy.

Tony Blair 'to meet families of Libyan AIDS children'

Thu May 24, 1:12 PM ET

The families of Libyan children suffering from AIDS after a court ruled they were deliberately injected with HIV-tainted blood by foreign medics said on Thursday they will meet Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are on death row in Libya after being convicted of infecting 438 children at a hospital in Benghazi, 56 of whom have since died.

The families said Blair is to visit Libya next week as part of an African farewell tour before he leaves office on June 27.

They said they welcomed his visit, and hoped a meeting would "relaunch the European initiative aimed at ending the drama and reaching an equitable solution that satisfies all parties."

No confirmation of the visit was forthcoming from Downing Street in London, which does not announce the prime minister's engagements in advance for security reasons.

"The families of the children appreciate Germany's position and the understanding of European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner over the plight of the children," they said in a statement.

They added that they hope to reach "a just solution" during Germany's six-month rotating EU presidency.

The five nurses -- Kristiana Valcheva, Nassia Nenova, Valia Cherveniachka, Valentina Siropoulo and Snejana Dimitrova -- and Doctor Ashraf Ahmad Juma were condemned to death in May 2004. The verdict was upheld last December.

They are awaiting a final verdict on their appeal against the death penalty. The hearing was expected at the beginning of May but has been delayed to a date yet to be determined, which sources close to the case say may mean a solution is in sight.

"The Europeans have proposed a compromise which the families are currently studying with the Kadhafi Foundation. It is possible that a settlement will be reached very soon," Idriss Lagha, spokesman for the families, told AFP on May 18.

The foundation, presided over by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Saif al-Islam, has played a central role in trying to resolve the issue of the medics, whose death sentences have been widely condemned by Western nations.

Foreign health experts have said the AIDS epidemic in Libya's second city was sparked by poor hygiene.

China tackling tainted blood products industry