Diaz, 35, used to visit her family home on weekends, but is too sick now. Her grandmother says death is drawing near.

In the last stages of the disease, Diaz is receiving medical care, extra food rations, and a comfortable place to stay where her family can visit her constantly, Trujillo said.

Four years ago, the communist island ended a controversial policy that kept HIV-positive patients in perpetual quarantine. Though there has been no talk of reinstating the policy, Cuban medical specialists offer no apologies for it.Instead, they credit the policy for one of the lowest Aids rates in the world at a time when many fear that a growing number of tourists could spread the virus in Cuba, long isolated by a three-decade US embargo.

``We get about a million tourists a year. Before it was 60,000 or 70,000 people,''said Jorge Perez, director of the country's first Aids sanitarium, where Diaz lives.

The danger was not so great in 1986, when Cuba's sanitarium programme was established. Until 1993, people with Aids were prohibited from leaving the clinics because of the fear that they would spread the disease.

The World Health Organisation and the Pan American Health Organisation harshly criticised the policy, saying that limiting patients' movements violated their rights. At the 12th World Aids Congress in Geneva earlier this week, Perez credited Cuba's health care system with helping people survive many years after testing HIV-positive.

Beginning in 1993, patients considered ``socially responsible'' were allowed to move out of the sanitariums and receive outpatient care.The government still reserves the right to keep certain patients on the premises, especially during the six months after they are diagnosed HIV-positive.