AEGiS-AP: Cuban Officials Say AIDS On Rise

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Cuban Officials Say AIDS On Rise

Associated Press - Friday October 9, 1998

MEXICO CITY (AP) _ Cuban health officials say that the number of people testing positive for the HIV virus that causes AIDS has grown on the island over the past two years and are calling on citizens to practice safer sex. Manuel Santin, national director of epidemiology for the Public Health Ministry, was quoted in Thursday's edition of the communist daily Granma as saying that 547 people have died from AIDS in Cuba since it was first detected on the island in 1986.

Since then, 2,040 people have tested HIV positive, said the story, which appeared on Granma's web site. Of those infected, 768 have developed AIDS, it said.

Santin did not provide specific numbers on the growth of HIV cases over the past two years.

Santin said that about two-thirds of those infected in Cuba are male homosexuals, but emphasized that people of both sexes and of all sexual orientations are equally susceptible to infection.

"It is important that each citizen assume the responsibility for their sexual behavior," he said.

The Cuban government has launched a campaign to encourage people to use condoms. Santin said that condoms are more readily available than during the economic crisis that began with the collapse of the former Soviet Union at the beginning of the decade.

Although the number of cases is growing, Cuba still has among the lowest AIDS rates in the world.

In the early years, the growth of the disease was kept in check largely by a policy of keeping HIV-positive patients in perpetual quarantine. The government ended that policy four years ago and started allowing patients considered to be "responsible" to live at home or continue to live at government sanitariums and go home to visit relatives on weekends.

Though there has been no talk of reinstating the policy, Cuban medical specialists offer no apologies for it.

Instead, they credit the policy for Cuba's low AIDS rate at a time when many fear that a growing number of tourists could spread the virus on the island.
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