(e) developing supportive legal and policy frameworks and removing punitive laws, policies, practices, stigma and discrimination that undermine human rights, increase vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and inhibit access to effective HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support, including medicines, commodities and services for people living with HIV/AIDS and for the populations most at risk.

developing supportive legal and policy frameworks and removing punitive laws, policies, practices, stigma and discrimination that undermine human rights, increase vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and inhibit access to effective HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support, including medicines, commodities and services for people living with HIV/AIDS and for the populations most at risk.

8. Welcomes the Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health as being an important political restatement of the rights of individual countries to take overriding action to secure access to affordable drugs to help protect their citizens from pandemics such as the HIV/AIDS crisis, but notes that the terms of the underlying intellectual property agreement, TRIPs, have not been changed; expresses its disappointment that the rights of members to import cheaper medicines from third countries were not confirmed and that the re-examination of this key issue will take at least a further twelve months during which time, based on United Nations figures, another 3 million AIDS suff ...[+++]erers will die;

J. whereas the US has taken legal action in the framework of the TRIPS Agreement at the WTO against Brazil, which has shown that through improvements in its health care system, combined with the provision of generic medicines, it is possible to halve the mortality rate of people with AIDS, for allowing the national production of generic medicines,

On 15 March 2001, a resolution of the European Parliament on access to drugs for HIV/AIDS victims in developing countries noted the inclusion of a commitment to tiered pricing in the Commission's programme for action and called for a system allowing developing countries equitable access to medicines and vaccines at affordable prices.

(e)developing supportive legal and policy frameworks and removing punitive laws, policies, practices, stigma and discrimination that undermine human rights, increase vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and inhibit access to effective HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support, including medicines, commodities and services for people living with HIV/AIDS and for the populations most at risk.