5 Pesos HIV

Cuba's HIV awareness coinage from the late 1990s was part of a broader series of health-themed commemoratives issued during the "Special Period" — the severe economic contraction following the Soviet collapse. Havana maintained an unusually aggressive public health infrastructure through this period, and the HIV program was one of the more internationally scrutinized: Cuba's mandatory testing and quarantine policies drew simultaneous praise and condemnation from global health organizations throughout the 1990s.