Scientists and physicians meeting in Tripoli last month reported substantial improvement in the treatment of hundreds of Libyan children who had been accidentally infected with HIV in the late 1990s.

Cooperation between the European Union and Libya has also led to a new multidisciplinary, integrated approach towards HIV/AIDS treatment in Libya that could be a model for North Africa and the Middle East, according to a draft report from the meeting, which was organized by the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, headed by Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi.

Senior Libyan, US and European health officials were joined at the workshop by scientists, such as Nobel laureate Richard Roberts and HIV researcher Vittorio Colizzi, who had agitated prominently for the liberation of six foreign medical workers jailed in Libya. The Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses were convicted of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV and sentenced to death. The six were freed last July following an international outcry.

The meeting was held to examine ways of preventing future tragedies similar to the infection acquired at the al-Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi, and to look generally at improving the treatment of HIV/AIDS in the country.

“Out of the disaster of Benghazi is emerging progress,” says Rafeek Hosny, a UK-based coordinator of the European Union's €2.5-million (US$3.9-million) HIV Action Plan for Benghazi, a humanitarian package agreed in 2004. Libya's openness in dealing with its HIV problem — including introducing condoms and needle-exchange programmes in prisons — is now far better than any other Middle Eastern country, Hosny claims. This month, Libya is to issue national guidelines, drafted in collaboration with the European Union, for managing HIV.

But scientists at the meeting criticized lack of progress on Libya's proposal to build an African centre for infectious disease control and research. Such a centre, they say, could potentially be of immense benefit to Libyans as well as a major resource for the whole of Africa.