[lbo-talk] Cuban quarantine (slandered as imprisonment) probably saved lives of many gay men and Black women

[Charles Brown]

Chuck
The obvious difference is that in the U.S. in the 1980s the religious right
wanted to use an AIDS quarantine to round up gay people.

I remember a protest we did at the University of Kansas during that time
  against this right wing doctor named Paul Cameron
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cameron_%28researcher%29).

^^^^^^

CB:  The Cubans have socialized medicine (of course), so the quarantined
AIDS patients were perhaps best categorized as in sanatoria rather than
prisons,as several scrambling , slanderous responses from those on this list
mislead to believe. In fact , the below article describes the mercifully
administered quarantine and its continuing evolution to a more patient
friendly regime.

 Not only did the Cubans achieve extraordinarily better than U.S. protection
and treatment of gay men, straight Black women and everybody with respect to
preventing Cubans getting sick with AIDS, but for those who had the disease,
they didn't face "marketplace" health care, which is very spotty depending
on whether you have money and how much.

So, of course, Chuck, the U.S. would have been incapable of carrying out a
Cuban style quarantine and then santoria in which the AIDS patients got free
treatment. The U.S. has a capitalist medicine regime. 

The article says the AIDS rate was 1:1 between gays and straights, so Cuba
didn't have the higher AIDS rate among gay men, as in the U.S. Nonetheless,
many gay men were no doubt saved by the Cuban approach, slandered here as
"authoritarian", in the typical redbaiting , anti-communist trope. What
sickening redbaiting from members of a "left" list.


^^^^^^^ 

Summary of issue of HIV-AIDS in Cuba


http://www.cubasolidarity.net/cubahol2.html

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The most controversial aspect of the Cuban national HIV/AIDS program is the
use of sanitariums for people with HIV. Since the beginning of the policy in
1986, the potential "HIV epidemic" was treated like any other contagious,
infectious disease, employing traditional public health measures. It was a
health problem/public health problem with human rights dimensions, rather
than a social problem/human rights problem with health repercussions.
Quarantine was the initial reaction to a public health threat whose scope
was unknown, which soon led to semi-isolation for patients known to be
infected. The goal was to reduce the risk of transmission through case
finding, isolation, medical treatment, education, and contact tracing. In
1989, with the arrival of Jorge Perez as the director of the Institute of
Tropical Medicine, curtailment of civil rights was relaxed to allow patients
to leave sanitoriums for extended periods without guides. Finally, in 1993,
the ambulatory care treatment program was started, which allows patients to
chose between living within a sanitarium, or living at home.

Clip-

We were able to visit a sanitarium in Matanzas, several hours away from
Havana, to avoid the often visited Santiago de las Vegas sanatorium. Though
the front entrance was gated, there were no barbed wire fences to keep the
patients in as has been previously reported. We were greeted by Dr. Ismael
Torres, the director of the facility, who gave us a tour of the housing
bungalows, consultation rooms, procedure room, kitchen and dining hall with
AC, TV/video room, library, and recreation room. The compound was clean,
bright, and well organized. The cabins were small, but neat. We were told
that a major goal of the sanitarium is education for the residents, which
was reflected in the well-stocked library. We were told that of 42 people in
Matanzas province infected with HIV, 28 have elected to live in the
sanitarium. Five persons carry an AIDS diagnosis, and 6 of the 42 are women.
The residents with whom we spoke all appreciated the high quality care they
received, the adequate living standards, and the plentiful supply of food
(most Cubans live with ration cards). We were disappointed to find out that
antiretroviral medications were not available to the patients in Matanzas
province, yet heartened by the news that only 16 patients had died in 5
years.