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Health

Charges against Iranian medics weaken global health battle

21 January 2009

THE imprisonment of two prominent Iranian doctors on charges of plotting to overthrow their government could impede relations between medics in the west and Iran, and threatens global public health.

The brothers Kamiar and Arash Alaei pioneered HIV treatment and prevention in Iran, and helped heroin addicts, working with prostitutes and prisoners and distributing methadone, free syringes and condoms. They won the approval of the World Health Organization and even Iran’s hard-line religious authorities.

They were imprisoned in June and have now been charged. Joe Amon of Human Rights Watch in New York suspects the brothers were singled out…

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