AIDS in Cuba

From quarantine to condoms: shifting policies and problems of HIV control in Cuba

This study reviews HIV prevention in Cuba in light of (1) the liberalization of HIV quarantine, (2) the growth in tourism, and (3) the aggressive system of public health promotion. Sixty-two key informants, including Cubans who are HIV-positive, at risk, or working as health professionals, were interviewed during June and July of 1996. Findings include: (1) there is a common public perception that the government's national HIV screening and contact tracing system obviates the need for individual precaution; and (2) both commercial sex workers and men who have sex with men believe that legal and social forces hinder their indigenous HIV prevention efforts. A well developed system of preventive health care offers the potential for effective HIV prevention. The fact that Cuban officials use the success of their HIV/AIDS control program to promote national pride may retard appropriate changes in their response to currently rising levels of infection.

Macroepidemiology of the HIVs-AIDS (HAIDS) pandemic. Insufficiently considered zoological and geopolitical aspects

The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs)-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or HAIDS pandemic originated from lentiviruses of nonhuman primates (thus qualifying as a zoonosis) that moved into humans in Africa. The HAIDS patients eventually die of opportunistic infections, all potentially zoonotic. The HAIDS infection remained parochial, first endemically and then epidemically, until the African urbanization that occurred in each of the countries postindependence. The latter included wars and the massive movement of soldiers (virologically naive) from the American continent to Africa and back. The HAIDS viral ecology coincided with African swine fever (ASF) in the Americas. Haiti became the focal point for both infections. Some infected Haitians also became, together with some infected drug addicts in the United States, a source of contaminated human blood for transfusions and production of plasma derivatives.