Minister of Health Yasmina Baddou of Morocco

Baddou said she also intended to tackle the black market in prescription drugs, whereby "medicines are sold in places other than pharmacies.

Moroccan Health Minister, Yasmina Baddou said the 2007-2011 National Strategic Plan to fight AIDS is meant to expand the prevention programs of the disease to profit a million people by the end of 2011.

Speaking at a question time in the House of Representatives (lower house), Baddou said that emergency services do not suffer from medicine shortage but from deficient methods in supplying, distributing and stocking drugs.

Washington -- For many years, Yasmina Baddou, Moroccan secretary of state for families, children and the handicapped, has worked to free children from forced labor.

Baddou says children are forced to work because of low family income “associated with illiteracy of the parents” because they have dropped out of school and as the result of criminal trafficking.

Baddou said that since the Moroccan government adopted the new measures, employment of children under age 15 has decreased from 600,000 in 2004 to 177,000 today.

The secretariat of state is also studying the set up of a national action plan to fight sexual exploitation of children, reactivate the functions of the judge of minors and boost the role of social assistance, Baddou said at the opening in Tangier Wednesday of the 29th internet scientific days.

In a speech she gave at the opening of a seminar on the beginning of the second phase of the MEDA project, Baddou said the creation of this center coincides with the launching of reforms in various fields in Morocco, particularly in matters concerning family.

Baddou said the use of DOTS, which was implemented in the country in 1991, has helped Morocco achieve World Health Organization TB-related targets, including a case detection rate of about 80% and a treatment success rate of more than 90.

Baddou said the government sought to regulate the work of housemaids, insisting that no girl under the age of 15 should be employed as a domestic servant.

Health Minister Yasmina Baddou said the ministry hopes to make more affordable treatment available to the country's least privileged.

Health Minister Yasmina Baddou said the ministry plans to restructure the national health system in order to lower costs and raise the quality and accessibility of services to the country's least privileged.

Health Minister Yasmina Baddou said the plan – set to run from 2008 to 2012 – will address two basic priorities: making treatment accessible to the least privileged in society and reducing the overall costs of care and medicines.

Answering a question at the House of Advisors, Yasmina Baddou said that her department will elaborate an action plan to facilitate patient's access to basic medical services, by exempting most of medicines treating viral hepatitis, cancer, heart and kidney diseases, diabetes and AIDS from the VAT.

Yasmina Baddou met en place des mécanismes pour éradiquer la corruption des hôpitauxLe ministère de la Santé a décidé de mettre en place de nouveaux mécanismes pour lutter contre la corruption dans les hôpitaux.

Yasmina Baddou, Secretary of State for Families, Children, and the Handicapped, Morocco Yasmina Baddou is an indefatigable advocate for children's rights.