17 October 2008
Maputo — A pharmaceutical factory, producing the anti-retroviral drugs that prolong the lives of people infected by the HIV virus, will be in production in Mozambique by 2010, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva promised in Maputo on Friday.
Brazil first promised to finance this factory in 2003, but in the past five years the project has not advanced beyond viability studies. Lula admitted on Thursday that Mozambique has done all that was requested of it, and that a site for the factory is ready in the southern city of Matola.
Speaking during the inauguration of a Maputo office of the Brazilian Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Lula promised that, in the event of any future obstacles, "we shall clear the path, we shall unblock matters so that we can come to Mozambique in 2010 and definitively inaugurate the FIOCRUZ laboratory and the anti-retroviral factory",
The FIOCRUZ office, the first to be set up outside of Brazil, is temporarily housed in the Brazilian Studies Centre in Maputo. FIOCRUZ was set up over a hundred years ago to train medical staff, to undertake medical research, and to produce vaccines and other medicines
Lula declared that Brazil has the moral obligation to assist Africa in the fight against HIV/AIDS. "This is a challenge that will never pay the debt that Brazil owes to the African continent", he said, "but it is a challenge that makes us more noble as human beings and as a country. We can have clear conscience that we are playing our role in Africa".
The debt that Lula mentioned is the 300 years of imports of African slaves to Brazil. The Portuguese transported millions of slaves to Brazil, and even after Brazil's independence from the Portuguese crown, the slave trade continued. Slavery was not abolished in Brazil until 1888.
Lula said that modern Brazil feels the ethical obligation to provide technology and know-how to the African peoples who were despoiled and who provided such vast quantities of free labour to Brazil.
"Brazil will build the anti-retroviral factory", he pledged. "It will build FIOCRUZ, which is a better institution than the factory. The factory produces medicines, while FIOCRUZ will produce knowledge".
Lula insisted that Brazil must keep its word with these two projects. He wanted to ensure that the factory was inaugurated while he was still in office.
"We have learnt that often people decide things and they don't happen", he said. "That's the case all over the world, not just in Mozambique or Brazil". But this time it would be different, because the world must know "we have a task to carry through in a particular time span".
Brazilian Health Minister José Temporão said that, as well as producing medicines, FIOCRUZ could contribute to lines of medical research aimed at the specific health problems of the southern African region.
His Mozambican counterpart, Ivo Garrido, told the ceremony "FIOCRUZ is a colossus in terms of scientific research, and the training of human resources. It's a fundamental component of strengthening public health in Brazil and throughout Latin America, and we Mozambicans should be aware of its importance".
Garrido believed that, with the establishment of a FIOCRUZ branch in Mozambique, a major step forward would be taken in strengthening the National Health Service.
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