Dear students, dear
readers,
Could you believe it ????
A US mea culpa on Cuba ??????????????????
A Regime’s Tight Grip on AIDS
Yudelsy García O’Connor,
the first baby known to have been born with H.I.V.
in Cuba,
is not merely still alive. She is vibrant, funny and, at age 25,
recently divorced but hoping to remarry and have children.
Her father died of AIDS when she was 10, her mother
when she was 23. She was near death herself in her youth.
“I’m not afraid of death,” she said. “I know
it could knock on my door. It comes for everyone. But I take my
medicine.”
Ms. García is alive thanks partly to lucky genes,
and partly to the intensity with which Cuba has attacked its AIDS
epidemic. Whatever debate may linger about the government’s harsh
early tactics — until 1993, everyone who tested positive for H.I.V.
was forced into quarantine — there is no question that they
succeeded.
Cuba now has one of the world’s smallest
epidemics, a mere 14,038 cases. Its infection rate is 0.1 percent, on
par with Finland, Singapore and Kazakhstan. That is one-sixth the
rate of the United States, one-twentieth of nearby Haiti.
The population of Cuba is
only slightly larger than that of New York City. In the three decades
of the global AIDS epidemic, 78,763 New Yorkers have died of AIDS.
Only 2,364 Cubans have.
A. Cuvelier
PS : Don't forget that you have to
practice your foreign langage to succeed the entrance exam to « Sces
Po »
PPS : Thanks France
culture!
