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For Immediate Release

Ten Major Medical and Public Health Groups Call for Release of Bulgarian Nurses and Palestinian Doctor Convicted of Infecting Children with HIV

Cambridge, Mass - 03/23/2007

Ten major medical and public health associations, representing hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses, and health experts, have written a letter to Libya's Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi calling for the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian physician wrongfully convicted of infecting children with the AIDS virus in a Libyan hospital. The letter is part of an international campaign to free the health workers, who have been imprisoned since February, 1999.

These groups signed the letter:

  • American Medical Association
  • American College of Physicians
  • American Medical Student Association
  • Association of Nurses in AIDS Care
  • HIV Medicine Association
  • International Human Rights Committee of American Public Health Association
  • Physicians for Human Rights
  • Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America
  • Society of General Internal Medicine
  • World Federation of Public Health Associations

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is an independent organization that uses medicine and science to stop mass atrocities and severe human rights violations against individuals. We are supported by the expertise and passion of health professionals and concerned citizens alike.

Since 1986, PHR has conducted investigations in more than 40 countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, the United States, the former Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe.

  • 1988 — First to document Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurds
  • 1996 — Exhumed mass graves in the Balkans
  • 1996 — Produced critical forensic evidence of genocide in Rwanda
  • 1997 — Shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
  • 2003 — Warned of health and human rights catastrophe prior to the invasion of Iraq
  • 2004 — Documented and analyzed the genocide in Darfur
  • 2005 — Detailed the story of tortured detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay
  • 2010 — Showed how CIA medical personnel sought to improve waterboarding and
                  other interrogation techniques that amount to torture
  • 2011 — Championed the principle of noninterference with medical services
                  in times of armed conflict and civil unrest during the Arab Spring

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