Brasília, April 3, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The National Coordination Office of STD/Aids makes it clear that Brazil is not going to construct drug factories in Africa. The Reuters Agency emitted this information on March 28, and other newspapers repeated it this weekend, without consulting the Ministry of Health.

Brazil has technical and scientific cooperation projects with various African countries and offers technology transfer for the manufacture of generic drugs for Aids treatment to governments that have a good network of state laboratories and are interested in starting local production of the medicine.

So far. two Portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique and Angola, have expressed interest in the Brazilian offer. A technical team from the Ministry of Health went to Mozambique to evaluate the country's laboratories, and they are going to Angola in the near future. (DAS)