Cuba, Lowest AIDS Rate in Caribbean
United Nations, May 30 (Prensa Latina) Cuba was highlighted on Tuesday as the Caribbean country with lowest HIV-AIDS levels as well as for carrying out one of the most efficient programs in the world to prevent the transmission of the illness from mothers to children.
The recognition appears in the UNAIDS report on the world AIDS epidemics, presented on Tuesday at the UN headquarters in New York, and contrasts the Island with the panorama in neighboring Caribbean nations, which is today the most affected region in the world after Africa for this scourge.
Last year alone the pandemic took over 2.8 million lives in the world, and four more million people were reported to be newly infected.
The document says that in the case of Cuba, there was a 0.1 percent rate for adults by the end of 2005, with some 4,800 people living with HIV and fewer than 500 dead due to diseases associated with AIDS.
The Cuban program to prevent mother-child transmission of HIV has kept the number of newborn HIV children under 100 so far, the report praises.
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