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Iraq Says French Lab Delivered AIDS-Tainted Blood to Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Aug 19 (News Agencies) - Baghdad said Sunday it had proof that the French drug company Merieux delivered AIDS-tainted blood to Iraq in 1986, which infected 123 hemophiliacs through transfusions, news agencies reported.
"The Iraq health ministry has irrefutable proof of the delivery by Merieux laboratories of contaminated blood to Iraq in 1986," a health ministry source said, quoted by the Iraqi Takrit weekly newspaper.
Merieux became Aventis Pasteur after the merger of the French Rhone-Poulenc and German Hoechst groups in 1999.
On August 7th, the Franco-German pharmaceutical group Aventis denied all responsibility for the contaminations, Agence France-Presse (AFP), reported.
Baghdad is currently claiming compensation in the amount of $33 million (37.63 million euros) for the 123 hemophiliacs infected with the virus through transfusions using the contaminated blood.
According to an Iraqi ministry source, the lawsuit was brought "after it was proven that the French company had sent a delivery of blood containing factor VIII antihemophilic contaminated with the HIV virus," AFP said.
Aventis Pasteur said in a statement that it had no knowledge that Merieux ever put contaminated blood on the market.
Iraq is currently suffering under an 11-year United Nations sanctions regime, which, according to the Iraqi Health Ministry, has brought the country's death toll to 1,508,006 - including thousands of children - since August 1990.
The high mortality rate is primarily the result of malnutrition and severe medicine shortages caused by the sanctions.
Iraq has long urged the U.N. to lift the crippling sanctions entirely, as have human rights organizations in the West.
Iraq, under Saddam Hussein's leadership, engaged in two major wars, against Iran in the 1980s, and against an U.S.-led U.N. alliance in 1991 after it invaded Kuwait.
The Iraqi government stands defiant in the face of international sanctions that have caused severe hardships for average Iraqis.
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