Abstract

CASTRO, ARACHU  and  FARMER, PAUL. ¿PERLAS DEL CARIBE? LA SALUD PÚBLICA EN HAITÍ Y CUBA. Rev. colomb. antropol. [online]. 2004, vol.40, pp.319-352. ISSN 0486-6525.

USING THE LENS OF AIDS TRAJECTORIES IN HAITI AND CUBA THE ARTICLE EXAMINES the health of these two countries, and in so doing, challenges currently predominant ideologies in international public health, including over-emphasis on costeffectiveness and sustainability as criteria to allocate resources. In Haiti, where AIDS is the number one cause of all adult deaths, the prevalence of HIV is the highest in the Americas. In Cuba, where the prevalence of HIV is the lowest in the Americas, its government has continued to improve health indicators and to provide comprehensive care for all AIDS patients despite a deepening economic crisis. The two distinct stories of AIDS in Cuba and Haiti mirror the nations' divergent paths to economic development: Cuba's promoting social and economic rights for its citizens, and Haiti's succumbing to increased inequalities and foreign debt. It is not the treatment of the destitute sick with AIDS that is unsustainable, but rather the ever-widening global outcome gap that prohibits medical technology from reaching those most in need of it: the poor. Instead of focusing on GNP and other standard economic measures, the health of the poor should be considered the most telling public policy and international public health outcome.

Keywords : AIDS; HIV; Haiti; Cuba; poverty; highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART); cost-effectiveness.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )