UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan met Thursday with senior executives of seven leading pharmaceutical firms to discuss ways of reducing the price of AIDS drugs to the Third World, Annan's spokesman said.
On April 5, Annan met representatives of six international companies in Amsterdam and helped persuade them and 33 other firms to drop a lawsuit to prevent South Africa from importing cheap copies of patented AIDS drugs.
The companies represented at Thursday's talks here were Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, F Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck and Co Inc, and Pfizer, spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
The talks also focused on access to drugs, particularly in the Least Developed Countries, improvement of health systems and the participation of the private sector in helping to raise resources for the global fight against AIDS, he said.
In May, Annan launched a global fund for the prevention of HIV/AIDS and treatment of sufferers which the United Nations estimated would need 3.2 billion dollars next year, rising to 9.2 billion in 2005.
Official and private donors had contributed a total of 1.497 billion dollars to the fund as of last week.
Eckhard said contributions to the fund had fallen since the September 11 terrorist attack on the United States, which had "distracted everyone" and "negatively affected the global economy."
Eckhard said the UN expected "a new surge of funds" later this year.
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