The Vatican
on Thursday condemned pharmaceutical companies for making large profits
from the sale of antiretroviral drugs in developed countries while pricing
the drugs at costs that are unaffordable for millions of HIV-positive people
in sub-Saharan Africa, AFP/Yahoo!
News reports (AFP/Yahoo! News, 1/29). Archbishop Paul Cordes,
president of the Vatican's charity organization, said that the Vatican
has undertaken several public and private initiatives to pressure drug
companies to lower antiretroviral prices for developing countries, according
to Reuters(Reuters,
1/29). "This is a moral issue which shows the lack of social conscience
by these capitalistic enterprises, which could easily save the lives of
the 25 million sub-Saharan Africans who are HIV-positive and otherwise
doomed," Father Angelo D'Agostino, a Jesuit priest who runs an AIDS orphanage
in Nairobi, Kenya, said, according to Agence France-Presse. Pope
John Paul II on Thursday in his Lenton message urged the world community
"not to close its eyes" to millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in developing
countries, particularly the approximately 2.5 million HIV-positive children
(Barnett, Agence France-Presse, 1/29). "These children are dying
because they don't have the medicines," Cordes said (ANSA, 1/29).
The World Health Organization
estimates that there are approximately 11 million AIDS orphans in Africa,
according to Agence France-Presse. The pope said that the Vatican
would establish a foundation to oversee the construction of an AIDS orphan
village near Nairobi, where the Kenyan government has donated land for
such a purpose (Agence France-Presse, 1/29).
|