The volunteer medical personnel will help create a network to supply prescription medicine to the population and provide "vital follow-up," Lage said, while training additional nurses and health-care workers.

Cuba will provide enough teachers to create 20 medical schools in these countries to train 1,000 doctors a year. Many of the instructors would be drawn from the more than 2,300 Cuban doctors already taking part in internationalist missions in 17 countries.

Lage said his country will provide anti-retroviral drugs for 30,000 patients, as well as doctors, teachers, psychologists, and equipment to help develop education and prevention programs in the affected areas.

"Our program to fight AIDS guarantees complete care for carriers and sufferers of the disease, including free anti-retroviral treatment for all AIDS sufferers, specialized medical centers for those who require them, and a constant struggle for patients to obtain full social integration, so that they can exercise their rights and are not discriminated against," he told the UN delegates.

Lage noted the advances in treating AIDS patients in Cuba despite Washington's economic embargo, which among other things denies the country access to 50 percent of the world's new medicines because they are produced in the United States. In spite of the U.S. attempt to strangle Cuba, "we have the lowest AIDS rate in the Americas and one of the lowest in the world," he stated. "We have controlled the epidemic, and what is more, achieved a life expectancy of 76 years," a level comparable to the most advanced imperialist countries.

The lack of treatment of people afflicted by AIDS has sharply reduced life expectancies in African countries, where almost half the people live on less than $1 per day. Most cannot afford the privately supplied drugs to extend their lives, and die without treatment. In Botswana, for example, life expectancy has plummeted from 64 years to 49 since the onset of the epidemic.

More than 25 million of the 36 million people worldwide infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, live in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world's most exploited regions. In the 20 years since the effects of AIDS were first medically diagnosed, more than 22 million people have died of the disease, according to the Economist. Seventeen million of them were on the African continent. Some 85 percent of the 2.8 million people who died of AIDS in 1999 were Africans. AIDS has also become a major epidemic in many Caribbean nations, where the incidence rate is accelerating at a pace second only to sub-Saharan Africa.

At the UN AIDS conference, some 3,000 government officials, drug company executives, and others discussed the issue for three days. At the end they approved a "battle plan" for fighting the disease and raising funds. UN secretary general Kofi Annan called for raising and spending up to $10 billion a year to respond to the pandemic. The U.S. government offered a measly $200 million toward this effort.

Lage questioned why wealthy powers could not provide the $10 billion. He noted that at least 22 individuals living in capitalist countries have private fortunes exceeding that amount.  
 
'We need justice and solidarity'
"Donations and goodwill to help calm the pain and suffering are welcome and gratefully received, but they are not the solutions to humanity's problems," Lage stated. "What we need is justice and solidarity."

The Cuban leader pointed out that Washington was the only government to vote against a resolution that calls for guaranteeing every individual the right to have access to AIDS medicines.

"The international economic order is criminally unjust," he added. "When the words 'democracy,' 'human rights,' 'individual liberty,' and 'equal opportunities' and others come out the mouths of the powerful, they ring hollow and demagogic."

Lage called on the UN conference to declare an end to patents for AIDS drugs and other medicines, which the owners of pharmaceutical companies in imperialist countries use to jack up prices and line their pockets.

He also urged the assembled governments to demand cancellation of the debt of semicolonial countries owed to banks in imperialist countries. "They have already paid more than once," he noted. African nations are saddled with a foreign debt of $315 billion, and their interest payments to the imperialist financial institutions amount to $15 billion a year.

"We believe it is necessary and possible to break down the imperialist dogmas that rule the world, but it will be a long fight," Lage stated. "None of the 36.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS, nor the million who die each year from malaria, nor the three million from tuberculosis, nor the 35,000 children who die daily from illnesses that can be prevented, nor many other groups, have time to wait."
 
 
Related articles:
Cuba aims for energy self-sufficiency
'The philosophy here is that doctors should work for the people'
U.S. youth prepare for exchange in Cuba
 
 
 
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