Iraq to sue French company over AIDS polluted blood

Iraq has prepared a new list including names of victims of blood polluted by the HIV, the AIDS causing virus, delivered by the Merieux French company to Iraq in 1986.

The Iraqi weekly al Rafeydeen ( the two tributaries, the Tigris and the Euphrates ) said that this list was prepared at the request of the foreign ministry in order to be sent to France within the legal measures currently made to sue the French company.

The weekly indicated that Iraq is still waiting results of the judiciary case it filed against Merieux company as it was asked to compensate for two million French Francs for each of the families of 180 persons who died because of the polluted blood.

The paper explained that a progress was not attained in the file of the case, although other victims in other countries were compensated including Algeria, Germany and Tunisia, for the same reasons.

"Merieux became Aventis Pasteur after the merger of the French company Rhone-Poulenc and the German firm Hoechst," reported The Namibian in August of 2001 and said Iraq is "claiming US$33 million in damages for delivering the contaminated blood, which subsequently infected 123 Iraqi haemophiliacs with AIDS."