Development & Aid, Headlines, Health, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs

HEALTH-CUBA: Global AIDS Fund Boosts Assistance

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Aug 23 2005 (IPS) - The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will provide Cuba with millions of dollars over the next three years to help improve quality of life and treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS and to reinforce efforts to prevent the spread of the disease.

The 14.6 million dollars to be contributed by the fund between 2005 and 2008 “entails direct benefits for the community,” said María Julia Fernández, a Cuban woman who has been living with HIV – the virus that causes AIDS – for almost 20 years.

A specialist at the National Centre for the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV/AIDS, with many years of experience as a community health counsellor, Fernández now devotes all of her energies to providing support for individuals diagnosed as HIV-positive, she told IPS.

Improving integral medical care and quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS is just one of the goals of the project that was originally submitted to the Global Fund in 2003, and has now entered its second phase.

The project is also aimed at promoting safe sex practices and the participation of civil society in confronting the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with an emphasis on the “co-existence and non-discrimination” of people living with HIV.

“Strengthening the Multi-Sector National Response to Prevent and Address the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Republic of Cuba”, as the project is known, forms part of the Cuban Health Ministry’s National Strategic Plan for combating the spread of the disease.

The Global Fund will provide Cuba with a total of 26.1 million dollars over the 2005-2008 period, reported Raffaella Garutti of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), who is responsible for overseeing the project’s execution.

Garutti told IPS that the Cuban initiative is considered the best “of all the projects supported by the Fund in 133 countries.”

She also praised the “political will” to fight the epidemic shown by the Cuban government.

The actions undertaken over recent years with the help of financing from the Global Fund include the publication of pamphlets on nutrition and legal issues, training for health care workers and peer counsellors, TV-based public awareness campaigns, the promotion and free distribution of condoms, and the creation of self-help groups.

“We will continue to emphasise training, with a special focus on women, because of their particular vulnerability, and will also keep working to ensure that people stick to their treatment programmes, because of the stigma felt by those who take antiretroviral drugs,” said Fernández.

Antiretroviral therapy, which slows down the body’s reproduction of HIV, thereby extending the life expectancy of people infected with the virus, can cause serious side effects and demands great personal discipline on the part of those receiving it.

The Cuban government provides antiretroviral drugs free of charge to all those who require them. As of Apr. 26, there were 1,873 people in Cuba receiving antiretroviral therapy, according to official figures.

Since 2001, Cuba has produced four reverse transriptase inhibitors (AZT, d4T, ddI and 3TC) and the protease inhibitor Indinavid in its own laboratories for use in antiretroviral treatment.

But there are newer antiretroviral drugs that Cuba cannot manufacture because they are subject to exclusive patent rights held by big pharmaceutical companies, a fact that also makes these medications extremely costly.

“The project will facilitate access to second-generation drugs that Cuba does not produce, as well as the distribution of a free dietary supplement to people receiving outpatient care,” said Fernández.

Official epidemiological statistics indicate that there were 4,952 people living with HIV in Cuba as of Apr. 26, of whom 1,348 had already developed symptoms of full-blown AIDS. Since 1986, a total of 6,288 people in Cuba have been diagnosed as HIV-positive, most of them men.

As of April, 2,970 of the Cubans officially recorded as HIV-positive were living in their own homes and receiving outpatient treatment, while the remaining 1,982 were living in one of the 14 AIDS sanatoria created throughout the country.

Fernández noted that the food aid supplement goes to all those registered in the outpatient care system who request it, and distributed through municipal public health system facilities. But there are some who will not take advantage of this assistance, she added, out of fear of being identified and stigmatised as HIV/AIDS patients.

The dietary supplement financed by the Global Fund includes three litres of cooking oil every two months and three cans of meat, four litres of yoghurt, 14 litres of fruit juice and a kilogram of cereal every month.

In addition to the food rations sold at highly subsidised prices to the entire Cuban population, the government also provides people living with HIV/AIDS an additional monthly quota of eggs, fresh or powdered milk, beef, fish and other food products at discount prices.

Garutti noted that the Global Fund project also supports special training for teachers in the educational system and the incorporation of a mandatory curriculum unit on sexually transmitted infections and AIDS in all the country’s schools.

The UNDP representative said that the situation in Cuba is “totally unique” in the Caribbean region, the second-most severely affected by the AIDS pandemic, after Africa.

With a population of over 11.2 million, Cuba reported a 0.07 percent incidence of HIV in the 15-19 age group in 2004, the lowest rate in all of Latin America and the Caribbean, according to official sources.

“It is a country that has achieved extremely low rates because it continues working at it, and that’s the way it should be. It’s essential to keep up the effort, because AIDS closely follows fluctuations in society, and any change in conditions can spark an upsurge in the epidemic,” said Garutti.

The fight against diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is viewed as a development issue by the United Nations, and is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the organisation’s member states in 2000.

The MDGs are meant to serve as a platform for drastically reducing poverty and inequality throughout the world by the year 2015.