Fewer supplies more solidarity. Cuban community pharmacy lends and swaps medicines.

Although all HIV/AIDS patients in Cuba are to receive free treatment from the State therapy is sometimes interrupted due to a delay in imports and not all patients have access yet to the latest anti-retroviral combination drugs several of which are now produced in Havana. To guarantee continuity of treatment a group of people living with HIV has set up a "community pharmacy. "We dont give the medicine away we lend it" says Armando Alvarez one of the creators of the initiative which has support of the governmental Centre for Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS. Alvarez a medical doctor who was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1988 says that in Cuba the situation is still complicated in terms of making certain medicines available to all persons living with HIV/AIDS. "Our project has no financing. We work with donated medicines which we provide to people who come from all over Cuba. We neither sell nor give away medicine; we make loans or swaps says Alvarez. "In some cases we lend the medicine to the patient who later replaces it. Others swap extra or unused supplies for another kind of medicine. Of course everyone must have a prescription he adds. (excerpt)