Haitians in Camp May Die, Doctors Warn : Guantanamo Bay: Pair call facility a ‘public health outrage.’ They urge Clinton to act to end a hunger strike among HIV-positive refugees.

Unless the Clinton Administration acts to end a 13-day-old hunger strike among HIV-positive Haitians being held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, deaths may occur within days, two American doctors said Wednesday.

The physicians, just back from several days on the island, described living conditions for the 267 refugees at the camp on Cuba’s eastern tip as “a medical and public health outrage.” In a report, they cited unsanitary toilet facilities, a lack of adequate running water and leaky barracks in a prison-like camp they called “a disgrace.”

All of the refugees at Guantanamo have been found to have plausible claims to political asylum but have been prevented from being brought to the United States by a 1987 ban on any would-be immigrant who tests positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Clinton Administration officials have said that the HIV restriction would be lifted soon. But they will not say how soon.

The Haitians held at Guantanamo are among more than 36,000 people who fled their homeland in wooden boats in the months following the September, 1991, military coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Of that total, more than 23,000 were returned to Haiti by the U.S. Coast Guard, while 10,700 others were allowed into the United States.

About 200 of the Haitians in the Guantanamo camp have refused all food since Jan. 29. Many are fainting daily, but they have vowed to continue their fast until they are permitted to enter the United States.

Douglas Shenson, a professor of medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York, compared the camp unfavorably to one built 100 years ago to house lepers in Louisiana. Shenson said that he noted “widespread problems of depression and anxiety” among the Haitians, adding that two suicide attempts had been made.

Shenson, along with Haitian-born doctor Jean Ford, a pulmonary specialist on the faculty of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of the chest clinic at Harlem Hospital, visited Guantanamo this week as representatives of Doctors of the World, a humanitarian assistance group.

In his report, Ford said unsanitary conditions at the camp “represent a serious public health menace.” He said children in the camp frequently played near portable toilets caked with feces.

Ford added that because the Haitians mistrust the military medical staff, most are refusing to take any medicine, including anti-tuberculosis drugs.

Michael Ratner, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights who accompanied the physicians, said the refugees, some of whom have been held for up to 15 months, were living in an “HIV prison camp” that he described as “out of Dante’s inferno--the ninth circle of hell.” He added that the Haitians were “imprisoned . . . in a barbed wire enclosure reminiscent of a cattle stockade.”

For several days, about 20 of the hunger strikers have refused to take shelter in the barracks, and have set up camp in an open soccer field. Shenson said they told him that they have remained in the open so they cannot be accused of cheating on their promise to refuse all food until being granted permission to enter the United States. Although these strikers’ vital signs remained normal as of Monday, Shenson said, “I am very concerned about the potential for serious medical harm to these individuals over the next few days.”

In addition to the health problems normally associated with a hunger strike, Shenson and Ford said those with HIV were likely to be at even greater risk.

More than 30 HIV-positive Haitians from Guantanamo have been paroled into the United States in recent weeks on an emergency basis, and refugee advocates insist that the same thing can be done to bring the remaining 267 into the country.

Clinton Administration officials have said that although they would like to do just that, they are wary of the political problems that might create.

The ban on the entry of HIV-infected people into the United States has been attacked as medically unnecessary.