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AIDS quarantine in Cuba:
Care & prevention, not repression
Lavender & red, part 99
By
Leslie Feinberg
Published May 26, 2007 7:49 AM
From both a scientific and human standpoint, the AIDS sanatoria health care
facilities in Cuba bore no relation to the threat of state quarantine in the
U.S.
In the U.S., there was no scientific merit to public proposals to empower the
state for surveillance and quarantine of people believed to have AIDS. There
was no way to identify how many people out of the vast population had already
been exposed. The epidemic was already entrenched. AIDS was not spread through
casual contact. And anti-gay and racist scapegoating, laws against same-sex
love, immigrant bashing, and laws against IV drug use and prostitution had
generated fear of the state, as well as of coming forward for testing or
treatment.
So threats of state investigation and forced isolation only drove the epidemic
deeper underground. The prohibitive costs of medical care, particularly for
those without health insurance, also barred many from seeking health care.
Yet on March 2, 1984, USA Today revealed that California officials were legally
pursuing the ability to forcibly quarantine people believed to have AIDS. The
same month, the Democratic co-chair of the Connecticut General Assembly’s
Judiciary Committee introduced broad quarantine legislation after a racist
media campaign demonized a Black woman, accused of prostitution and drug
addiction, who was reported to have AIDS.
Even as politicians were refusing to allocate the funds necessary to meet this
public health emergency, the big-business media were unjustly accusing Haitian
immigrants in the U.S. of spreading AIDS.
The late Michael Callen told Workers World at that time that the press for
quarantine powers was “not really to protect people but to further
certain political goals, to further isolate already disenfranchised
people.” Callen said that the singling out of a Black woman in
Connecticut and allegations without scientific basis that Haiti and Africa were
the sources of the epidemic were attempts “to blame all calamity on the
Third World.” (Workers World, April 5, 1984)
Gay men and bisexuals were blamed for the epidemic for much the same reason
that the church hierarchy in the Middle Ages accused Jewish people of creating
bubonic plague by “poisoning the wells.”
Media in the South and Jerry Falwell’s right-wing fundamentalist
publication “Moral Majority Inc.” editorialized that AIDS was
God’s “deserved punishments” against homosexuals.
(aidssurvivalproject.org)
Far-right columnist Patrick Buchanan titled his commentary: “AIDS
Disease: It’s Nature Striking Back.” (New York Post, May 24,
1983)
That’s why the late Bobby Campbell, a San Francisco registered nurse with
AIDS, told Workers World on March 25, 1984, how concerned he was about the
political abuses of broad quarantine measures in the U.S. He warned, “We
would see gay men locked up en masse and it is possible in more backward
localities that lesbians could be included in that.”
The U.S. government declared war on people with AIDS rather than marshal funds
and forces to deal with the epidemic.
Science, not scapegoating
By contrast, Cuba—an island nation of 11 million that was blockaded by
U.S. imperialism—had prepared its health care system for the epidemic two
years before its first diagnosis of an AIDS case. So when AIDS first emerged in
the population, it could be easily identified and isolated before being spread
to the rest of the people.
In 1986, Cuba opened up 13 sanatoria that provided care for 99 people, only 20
percent of whom were believed to have contracted AIDS through same-sex contact.
(Denver Post, Feb. 10, 2003)
Joseph Mutti wrote from Havana in June 1999, “Once a person has tested
HIV-positive, attempts are made to trace everyone who had sexual contact with
the person. Given Cubans’ general openness about their sexuality, and
Cuba’s cradle-to-grave health care system, it’s usually possible to
ascertain how and when a person was infected.
“The basic principle of the Cuban public health-care system, widely
recognized as the Third World’s best,” Mutti explained, “is
to prioritize the health of the population as a whole instead of focusing
exclusively on individual care. This is important for understanding HIV/AIDS
policies, including the sanatorium system that earned Cuba an unfair reputation
for employing repression to counter the virus.” (“Love and Honesty:
The Dawn of Gay Rights,” Resource Center of the Americas.org)
The newspaper Granma explained Cuba’s reasons for using quarantine:
“The main usefulness of this measure is to slow down as much as possible
the epidemic progression of the disease to allow time for other measures of
disease control to have a medium- or long-term effect, such as education
(encouraging changes in sexual habits and behavior), until such time as a
vaccine and treatment exist, auguring a definitive solution to the
problem.” (“Cuban Strategy in the Struggle Against AIDS,”
Granma, Sept. 18, 1988)
When asked about the Cuban approach to AIDS, then-Cuban Deputy Public Health
Minister Hector Terry explained in October 1987, “The quarantine center
is a sanatorium. We have a very small number of people carrying the virus, and
we believe that because of that, we are in a unique situation. We have an
opportunity, in epidemiological terms, of controlling the spread of AIDS and
preventing it from becoming a major epidemic as it has in other countries,
where they don’t know how to confront, reduce or eliminate it.
“We are in a situation that permits us to make this kind of decision, and
to wait a while because we are not talking about something permanent, for a
whole lifetime. We’re talking about a dialectical situation.”
Terry added, “This aspect [quarantine] is controversial, some groups of
scientists disagree with it.” He said that the objections were
“more from a political than a scientific standpoint. But we believe our
country has this epidemiological opportunity and we shouldn’t lose it. We
are trying to prevent the spread of the virus throughout the country by means
of sexual relations that our patients could have with other people who at this
point have not been infected with the virus.”
“Our country has its own philosophy and the first principle of this
philosophy is respect for human dignity. I think that human dignity requires
care of the individual. You know that we spare no resources here to make sure
that our people have the best health care possible anywhere in the world. And
that’s part of what we’re trying to maintain in our battle against
AIDS.” (Interview with Karen Wald, Guardian, Oct. 28, 1987)
The best care—for free
Cuba provided free health care to its population despite economic obstruction
by the U.S. and later the devastating loss of its main trading partner, the
Soviet Union. Cuba organized its scarce resources—not just to stem
transmission of the epidemic, but to provide humane care.
“Organized like small communities,” MEDICC Review wrote, “the
sanatoriums are made up of apartment complexes and small houses, plus
infirmary, offices and other patient facilities.” (Vol. II, No. 1, 2;
2001)
People with AIDS received healthy food, medications and other treatment,
air-conditioned housing, exercise and sports, movies, television, videos, rest,
and psychological and social services; everything was free except
cigarettes.
Cubans with AIDS continued to receive their full paychecks, even if they
weren’t able to work. Their jobs were held open indefinitely. Terry
stressed, “This is very important, so that they have no concern regarding
the support of their families.
“What other country in the world would be capable of paying full salary
to people with AIDS? Terry asked. “I think that’s very linked to
the whole question of human rights and the controversies around this. We know
there are countries that shout about human rights, such as the U.S. where a
person who gets AIDS may die of hunger, lose his job, it’s hard to get
into a hospital. Treatment there costs an average of $700 a day.”
Terry added that the Cubans’ families also received special attention. A
working group of psychologists, sociologists and social workers helped the
families of people with AIDS deal with their problems, as well. Terry concluded
that people with AIDS had greater peace of mind knowing their families were
being cared for.
Next: Cuba declared war on AIDS, not on people with AIDS
To read more about Cuba, read parts 86-98 of Lavender & Red at
workers.org.
E-mail: [email protected]
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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