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French anti-AIDS care for court drama children

France has offered to treat a group of HIV-positive Libyan children at the centre of a case in which five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were accused of infecting them and detained in Libya. According to Agence France-Presse, the latest development in the long-running saga followed a 25 December verdict by Libya's supreme court, overturning the death sentences and ordering a new trial for the healthcare workers. "Action has been taken at an international level to offer adequate services to the children in Libya and abroad. A first group of 30 children will go to France on 27 February," said Saleh Abdel Salam, director of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's charitable organisation, the Gaddafi Foundation. An international fund to help the remaining 375 children - 51 of the original group of 426 have since died - was set up at the end of January this year, but its value has yet to be decided in talks between representatives of the families and Western officials.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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