New York, 9 June 2021. Dr. José Angel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health of Cuba participated today at the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, where he deplored the fact that twenty years after the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, inequalities in access to health care not only persist, but in many nations they are increasing.
The Cuban Minister of Health presented Cuba´s progress in the response to HIV, which is inserted in Primary Health Care, centered on people and with intersectoral participation and involvement of key populations, attending to the specific needs of each group.
Among other positive indicators, the Caribbean island shows a progressively decrease in the AIDS-related death rate; people under fifteen years of age are practically not affected by this epidemic; and the incidence of this disease has a trend towards stabilization. All this, thanks to a program for prevention, diagnostic and antiretroviral therapy, together with approximately two million serology tests that are performed annually including more than 300,000 tests to pregnant women.
Portal Miranda recalled that in 2015 the World Health Organization validated Cuba as the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and syphilis. Said status was revalidated in 2017 and 2019 and those purposes are currently fulfilled. We are pleased to say that in 2019 and 2020, Cuba reported no case of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, he stressed.
The Cuban Minister highlighted that nothing has prevented Cuba from continuing to implement prevention actions and care for those who have been infected with AIDS. All that in spite of a suffocating economic war and the application of inhumane unilateral coercive measures that have limited medical resources for the management of this and other diseases, he stated.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations
