“Cuba ratifies its commitment and firm will to protect and care for the people who live in our country with the virus, as well as to cooperate with other nations to whom the experiences and achievements we have achieved in relation to its prevention may be useful. , diagnosis, treatment and control,” he reported on the Minsap website.
Currently in the country, 28,643 people live with HIV/AIDS, of which 96.8 percent have treatment, while 89.3 percent of those who receive therapy have a suppressed viral load of the disease.
In 2015, the largest of the Antilles was certified as the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS and congenital syphilis, a condition that was revalidated in 2017, 2019 and 2022.
The minister recalled that just over 30 years ago Cuba’s cooperation with the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) began.
There are multiple joint projects and actions that have been launched since then with the aim of protecting and caring for people living with this disease, both in our country and in others around the world, he said.
He reported that with the purpose of evaluating how much has been done along this path and at the same time continuing to look for what more can be done to strengthen it for the benefit of health and life, the executive director has been visiting the island since last Monday. of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima.
Portal described as fruitful a working meeting that took place this Tuesday with the expert, in which they shared important ideas associated with the development of the National Program for the Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS, which has been put into practice since 1986 and is based on social prevention. with a community, intersectoral and multisectoral approach.
He highlighted that the results obtained have been possible, among other elements, thanks to the political commitment of the State to care for people living with the virus and the investments it has made to do so.
Likewise, they are due to the characteristics that distinguish our Health System, based on Primary Care, and a projection towards prevention, an aspect in which the multisectoral approach with which we work is essential, he emphasized.
All of this has broad legal support in various Cuban regulations such as the Constitution of the Republic, the Family Code and the recently approved Public Health Law.
Together with these elements, it is also important to highlight the contributions that the Global Fund, an international organization whose objective is to accelerate the end of the AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics, has made in different aspects to Cuba’s fight against HIV/AIDS.
The contribution of UNAIDS has also been extremely significant in aspects related to advice, acquisition of medicines and capacity building to strengthen the Cuban Program to confront the pandemic, stated the head of the Minsap.
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