HEALTH-CUBA: Education and Prevention While Working on AIDS Vaccine

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Mar 13 2001 (IPS) - Cuba plans to step up education and prevention efforts to maintain its position as one of the countries with the lowest incidence of AIDS, while local researchers try to come up with a vaccine.

Today, 2,385 people in this Caribbean island nation of 11 million are living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the cause of a pandemic that spread to an additional five million people last year alone.

The Cuban Health Ministry reported this week that three out of four Cubans testing positive for HIV were men, most of them homosexuals, who along with the young are at highest risk.

Although he did not provide precise figures, the Health Ministry’s director of epidemiology, Manuel Santín, said AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) continued to spread slowly in Cuba.

The highest incidence is found in the western part of the country, especially Havana, he reported.

Santín announced that educational and prevention efforts would be stepped up this year. For example, the distribution of condoms will be improved, in order for them to made available not only in pharmacies, but in tourist and recreational centres as well.

Education and prevention are “key for reverting the epidemic’s growth rate,” added Santín in an interview with the local press.

“If by education we mean teaching and preparing for life, then we must teach our youngsters how to live with the reality of an epidemic that can affect them, and teach them that they must adopt protective practices to avoid infection,” said the official.

Cuba has 14 medical centres that attend people living with HIV and patients with full-blown AIDS, while the local pharmaceutical industry produces the anti-retroviral drugs AZT, D4T, DDI and DDC, and will begin to produce sakinavir and melfinabir this year.

Of the total number of people testing positive for HIV, 900 receive outpatient treatment and support that enables them to continue leading a normal lifestyle, said Santín.

The outpatient treatment plan was put in place in December 1993, and is designed for those patients who, after undergoing a comprehensive medical evaluation of their health, hygienic- environmental and dietary conditions, are deemed apt for living a normal life in society.

Although Cuba’s labour legislation protects HIV and AIDS patients through a special resolution in effect since 1997, the law has been unable to prevent cases of discrimination.

“Many are accepted in their workplaces, but there are places where the prejudice has not been overcome, and there is subtle discrimination against all HIV-positive individuals,” a specialist with the Centre for Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS told IPS.

The government has offered to help fight the epidemic on the international stage, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean, regions in the developing South with a specially high incidence of AIDS among people aged 15 to 49.

Early this month, Cuba expressed its support for Brazil in that country’s conflict with transnational drug giants, which maintain that the Brazilian government’s encouragement of the local production of generic anti-retroviral drugs violates international agreements on patents.

“Once more, the thirst for unlimited profits has clashed with vital human interests, and is attacking the most fundamental human right: the right to life,” stated Cuba’s Foreign Ministry after Brazil announced measures against laboratories and companies that refused to lower their prices.

Cuban scientists have been participating over the past few years in the search for a vaccine against AIDS, which has claimed 21.8 million lives worldwide, including four million children under 15.

Researchers at the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine, and the Laboratory on AIDS Research are involved in the search for a vaccine.

Several countries are in the race to become the first to develop an AIDS vaccine, although experts say it will take at least five to 10 years – by which time more than 20 million more deaths will have been caused by the deadly disease.