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• 02 / 01 / 2009

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In an exclusive interview to the Cuban News Agency, Daniel Pérez Correa, a member of Cuba's national commission for AIDS explained that on these drugs production, and on the acquisition of others from the World Fund, Cuba spends 2,000,000 dollars a year, to guarantee totally free treatment to the patients.

Perez Correa highlighted the antiretroviral treatment is available to every person needing it, and that since 2001 it includes the Cuban-made antiretroviral drugs.

He also stressed that from every 100 HIV carriers that developed the disease, 24 of them would die within the same year, however from 2003 on the lethality of the disease has decreased a 5 percent, which allows this persons to reinsert themselves in everyday life.

From those persons infected in 2001 who are receiving the antiretroviral treatment, 90 percent are still alive. Before the implementation of this treatment, HIV positive patients would die within two years.

According to international researches, HIV positive people using this treatment live as an average four years less than non-HIV carriers. Life expectancy after getting the virus is now with the new treatments 25 to 35 years, a different situation than before when within 10 years, the
infected people died.

Cuba is among the 14 countries in the world with lowest infection rate thanks to the information and prevention campaign, which has allowed the population to become HIV-AIDS aware.

Since 1985-86 some 10,600 cases have been diagnosed in Cuba, 33 of them children. The genre infection rate is 4 men per each woman. The scourge is mainly present in men having sex with other men, and within this group those who are bisexuals.

(RHC)