Africa: AIDS Groups Blast Bush Plan

If U.S. President George W. Bush is expecting bouquets from AIDS activists for his proposal to expedite approvals for life-saving anti-retroviral drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), he is in for a disappointment. Africa and AIDS activists are assailing the proposal not only as a new attempt to delay the delivery of desperately needed, low-cost generic drugs to needy AIDS victims in Africa and the Caribbean, but also as an effort to undermine the World Health Organisation's (WHO) own expedited approval process which has already authorized the use of generics by the World Bank, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.