Inter Press Service - August 14, 2001
Dalia Acosta

So far, only Portugal, Belgium, France and the autonomous Spanish community of the Canary Islands have expressed interest in setting up triangular cooperation agreements so that the Cuban plan can be implemented in the African countries hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic.

"I am convinced that a proposal can be articulated from the Canaries, from the government of Spain, and from the European Union, if we had a clear path to follow," said Rom n Rodr guez, president of the regional government of the Canary Islands, during a July visit to Havana.

Rodr guez expressed willingness to help Cuba, pointing out that the Canary Islands have never before engaged in any organised efforts to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa despite being located just 100 km off the western coast of that continent.

He said the time has come to change his regional government's lack of action on the matter.

The Cuba-Africa proposal also appeared on the agenda of meetings held last month in Havana involving officials of the Fidel Castro government and Portugal's foreign trade and cooperation secretary, Luis Felipe Marques Amado.

Marques Amado made it clear that he would pursue aid in Lisbon to back Cuba in its medical endeavours in Africa, reported the Cuban press at the time.

Belgium, the country that holds the rotating presidency of the European Union this semester, will work with Cuba on a similar accord, a commitment that arose in July when Cuba's Foreign minister Felipe P rez Roque visited the European nation.

The idea, which Castro has promoted before various international forums as part of an integral health programme for Africa, has taken shape - and in recent months has become one of main objectives of Cuban diplomacy.

Vice-President Carlos Lage laid out the programme Jun 25 at the United Nations Special Session on HIV/AIDS, and presidential minister Ricardo Cabrisas subsequently presented it before the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Following his presentation at the UN headquarters in New York, Lage met with the heads of state or government from Comoros, Kenya, Nigeria, Portugal, Senegal and Swaziland, and with officials from Brazil, France, Netherlands, South Africa and Uganda.

Concrete responses have yet to reach Havana from most of the industrialised countries consulted during that opportunity.

Cuba stands ready to send 4,000 doctors and health specialists to Africa in order to build an infrastructure to facilitate efforts to supply the population with HIV/AIDS medications as well as essential prescription and follow-up procedures, according to government sources.

These health brigades include physicians, instructors, psychologists and other professionals necessary for treating HIV/AIDS sufferers and for advising and assisting with campaigns to prevent this and other diseases.

Havana has also offered to provide the professors necessary to create 20 medical schools in Africa, which could graduate 1,000 doctors each year after the initial start-up phase. The teaching staff would be chosen from among the 2,359 Cuban physicians who are already working in 17 African countries.

Cuba would provide, among other elements, the diagnostic and treatment equipment for the medical schools' basic prevention programmes. The staff would receive wages in Cuban pesos.

By the end of last year, there were an estimated 36.1 million people in the world with HIV (human immuno-deficiency virus), or with full-blown AIDS.

From the beginning of the pandemic in the 1980s through the end of 2000, AIDS had claimed the lives of 21.8 million people, one- third of whom were African.

According to a report from the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), 70 percent of the adults and 80 percent of children infected with HIV are found in Africa.

An estimated 25.3 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS on that continent, largely in sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease has become the leading cause of death. In 16 African nations, more than one-tenth of the population aged 15 to 49 are HIV positive.

"The international community would need only to provide the medications, equipment and material resources" for the services that Cuba would provide to HIV/AIDS patients in Africa, "at no profit whatsoever," stated Lage.

Havana maintains that its proposal would solve the shortage of qualified personnel who are willing to provide health services in isolated locations, one of the main obstacles for this type of programme.

According to some sources who oppose Castro's socialist government, the initiative is really a diplomatic ploy intended to win international support for Cuba and to counteract foreign pressures for political change on the island.

The motives of the health experts who join the brigades that travel to Africa and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean have also generated controversy because there have been a few cases in which the professionals serving abroad have sought political asylum in a bid to emigrate to the United States. (END/IPS/la af/he dv/tra-so ld/da/mj/01)
010814
IP010805

Copyright ©1990, 2000. ÆGIS. All materials appearing on ÆGIS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of ÆGIS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. Feedback/Contact Us.