Brazil: Lula condemns U.S. blockade of Cuba

In the NEIGHBORS TO THE SOUTH section of Radio Progresso

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President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva repeated his condemnation of the U.S. blockade against Cuba and advocated in favor of stronger relations between Brazil and the Caribbean island nation.

Lula mentioned the issue at a press conference with foreign correspondents at the Brazilian capital, and picked up by O Globo daily, which published the president’s declaration in its Internet edition.

The Brazilian president said that the blockade is unnecessary and called for greater economic and trade collaboration with the island. He expressed the possibility of Brazilian credits for the modernization of several Cuban industrial sectors.

http://www.rprogreso.com/

and establish its own identity, WITHOUT our disrespectful attempts to control everything that moves there.

Brazil's a big country. It will be interesting to see what developes with Brazil and Cuba.

I read today that Lula intends to visit Cuba in September.

so little time ..
:-)

He has been very outspoken on the need for South American nations to stick together during trade talks, to ensure that the US and Canada don't screw them they way they screwed Mexico with NAFTA.

I, for one, am glad to see them establishing their own identity. I just hope there aren't any "accidents" among the key leaders anytime soon.

A United States of South America has a nice ring to it.

I wish.

180

are obviously building WMD and hiding Osama and Saddam. We must invade! How did OUR oil get underneath THEIR dirt anyhow?? THEIVES!

Those who follow Cuba will remember that the island has made great advances in the fight against AIDS. I'll try to dig up an article to post along with this one.

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Brazil is threatening to break patents and start producing anti-AIDS drugs if the three pharmaceutical companies selling them to South America's largest country don't slash prices.

"The cost has to go down so we can treat the patients," Marcia Lage, a spokeswoman for the Brazilian Health Ministry's AIDS division, said Thursday. "If the price remains high, we'll start producing or importing the drugs."

Negotiations this month to lower the price of the AIDS drugs sold to the Brazilian government by Abbott Laboratories, Roche and Merck & Co. have failed so far to produce any meaningful price reductions, she said. The government wants a 50 percent price cut.

As a result, Brazilian Health Minister Humberto Costa issued an ultimatum to the companies: If no acceptable plan is received by Saturday, Brazil will start making generic versions of the drugs and explore the possibility of importing them.

http://www.620ktar.com/news/article.aspx?article_id=206547&cc=012345

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By November 2001— five months after the Cuban public health system introduced domestically manufactured anti-retrovirals for all the country’s AIDS patients—deaths from AIDS and the incidence of opportunistic infections among HIV-AIDS patients were registering a drop from the same period one year before. The wards of the Pedro Kourí Tropical Medicine Institute, where seriously ill AIDS patients are hospitalized, are practically empty. According to Dr. Jorge Pérez, some 90 patients were usually hospitalized there each month from around the country, but by November that rate had dropped to a dozen.

Cuba now produces AZT (zidovudine), D4T (stavudine), 3TC (lamivudine), DDI (didanoside) and crixivan (indinavir). Combined treatment is begun once patients’ viral load and lymphocytes reach internationally-established levels, or if particular opportunistic infections appear. The analysis of which combination therapy will be applied to each patient and when is carried out by a team of specialists from the Tropical Medicine Institute, epidemiologists from across the country, pharmacologists, and internists, and a group of HIV-positive persons. Patients are urged to stick to the treatment recommended, since abandoning the medications will most certainly shorten their life expectancy. Special emphasis is placed on their use of condoms during sexual relations, since infecting another person with a strain of HIV under treatment may hasten the spread of drug-resistant HIV.

Cuba is now preparing to produce nevirapine, amprenavir and nelfinavir.

Prevalence of HIV in Cuba is 17 times lower than the average for the rest of Latin America, where one of every 200 adults is infected with the virus, and also considerably lower than the rate for the Caribbean, which is one for each 50 adults.
Latest HIV-AIDS Statistics for Cuba

As of October 31, 2001, a total of 3,750 persons had been diagnosed as HIV-positive in Cuba, a cumulative number representing total cases since the epidemic was first found in the country in 1986. Of these cases, 2,923 are men (77.94%) and 827 women (22.05%). Of the 1,464 HIV-positive persons who have developed full-blown AIDS, 940 have died, and 584 are today living with AIDS.

http://www.medicc.org/Medicc%20Review/III/hiv-aids/news.html