“A project, co-sponsored by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), got under way in Afghanistan today with the arrival in Kabul of donated production machinery for the country’s first-ever generic medicine factory,” reports the U.N. News Centre. The factory “will eventually produce 300 million to 400 million tablets of safe, urgently needed analgesics and antibiotics for local use.”


The machinery will equip a new factory. The plant will be “fully Afghan-owned” and managed by a local doctor. Forty local employees will be taught skills and technology.

The “Afghan Generic Medicines Project,” initially launched in 2002, brings together [the] Swiss non-profit organization Business Humanitarian Forum, the Brussels-based European Generic Medicines Association and the UNDP Country Office in Afghanistan.


Currently, one-quarter of all Afghan children die before the age of 5, often due to the lack of proper medication for treatable infectious diseases.


Speaking of drugs — sigh — The Guardian leaks the report on drug sale profits that Tony Blair refuses to publish:

An economic model made for Downing Street shows that the profits per kilo for a major Afghan trafficker into Britain carry a profit margin as high as 58% – higher than Louis Vuitton’s margin of 48% or Gucci’s 30%.

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