Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

by Tracy Kidder

By 2000 the overall rates of HIV infection and deaths from AIDS were dropping in the United States, but infections and deaths had claimed a much larger percentage of the population than in Cuba, and HIV had become mainly a heterosexual disease concentrated among the American poor. Cuba, meanwhile, had the lowest per capita incidence of HIV in the Western Hemisphere—its HIV statistics were probably among the most accurate in the world, for the simple reason that, in Cuba, testing wasn’t optional and millions had been tested. On an island of 11 million, only 2,669 had tested positive as of 2000. The virus had progressed to AIDS in 1,003 of those people, and 653 had died. Only five children had caught HIV from their mothers, and all those children were still alive. Because Cuba had acted quickly to clean up its blood supply, only 10 people had contracted HIV from transfusions. One could argue that the U.S. embargo had protected the island, but then again, back at the start of the epidemic Cuba had engaged in a lot of commerce with Africa.