VivirLatino

AIDS Crisis in Puerto Rico

11:27 H | Topics: Health - Magazines - Puerto Rico

Oh no, here comes the Rican with another Puerto Rico related post. This month's issue of POZ Magazine has an article about the AIDS crisis in Puerto Rico and how it is endangering the lives most in need of critical services.

According to the article, there are 11,000 people living with AIDS on the U.S. colony, and many are being denied access to treatment because they face stereotypes and and massive mismanagement of services. With an AIDS prevalence rate there is almost twice that of the U.S. mainland, people are losing their lives and not enough people seem to care.

Take for example the case of Ariel, who after becoming very sick, was transferred without family approval or notification, into a hospital that refused to treat him because he was "podrido" , rotten.

Ariel had been placed in a tiny, hot room with a broken ceiling fan and was left unattended by doctors and nurses—who...were afraid to touch Ariel for fear of contracting HIV.

Because of the delay in services, Ariel died before getting much needed medications.

And if you think that cases like Ariel's have nothing to do with the political status of the island, then you are missing the very purpose of a bureaucratic nightmare maze of Commonwealth and Federal services, crippled.

Despite the attention given to the island by Democrats, before there was an official Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency, the fact remains that Puerto Ricans cannot vote for President of the country whose laws they must obey. The Rican congressional representative is little more than a figure head.

In 1999 and 2000, several former officials of the San Juan AIDS Institute were convicted of stealing more than
$2 million of federal AIDS funds for personal and political gain while they were in office from 1988 to 1994.

And while the current crisis isn't as scandalous, the system as it functions now, leaves clinics without reimbursement for services for up to 9 months showing that the U.S. doesn't care about Rican lives. Clinics have resorted to rationing meds.

Read the entire article , including details on how community organizations are creating support networks, read here.

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