Cuba, 1986-Present: Effective Strategy Or Human Rights Violation?

HIV/AIDS in Cuba; Quarantine and Contract Tracing Strategies, 1986-present: Effective Strategy or Human Rights Violation?

This paper will examine the controversial strategies of quarantine and contact tracing within the context of HIV/AIDS in Cuba. The timeframe of 1986 to present was chosen because quarantining was introduced in 1986. Although. Quarantining does not continue to the present, contact tracing does and the impacts of these two practices are evident within the Cuban strategy to this day (Gorry 2009).

The first case of HIV/AIDS appeared in Cuba in late 1985 (Gorry 2009, 11). Today, the prevalence on the island is 0.1%, the lowest rate in all of the Americas (Gorry 2009, 10), a notable achievement considering the Caribbean region has the second

Introduced in 1986, the practice of permanently quarantining HIV positive patients on complexes called ‘Sanatoria’ was an immediate response to an infectious disease of which very little was known (Gorry 2009, 11). The practice of quarantining was permitted due to a law passed in 1982 by the Cuban government. The permitted the government to isolate of those citizens carrying infectious diseases that presented a health threat to the general public (Anderson 2009). The practice was repealed in 1989 and other strategies such as voluntary quarantine, and ambulatory programs have since replaced it (Anderson 2009,81). There is a lot of inconsistency throughout the literature as to when exactly the practice of quarantining patients ended but the majority indicates that it ended some time between 1989-1993 (Anderson 2009,81). Contact tracing is the practice of testing all of an HIV positive patient’s sexual partners after a diagnosis is made and storing the results in a government database. This is controversial for its breeches of