Yudelsy García O’Connor

Yudelsy García O’Connor was the first known H.I.V.-positive baby in Cuba. Born Aug. 14, 1986, she is now 25 — tiny, but healthy. She is also lively, funny and irreverent, divorced and hoping to remarry and have children.

She was 3 before anyone realized that she was infected. Her father had been a soldier stationed in Angola. On his return in 1982, he worked as a truck driver, a job that helped him have girlfriends all over this island; he infected five of them.

Ms. García’s illness was discovered through a long line of contact-tracing. Her father had divorced her mother, but his second wife tested positive during a routine pregnancy screening. He was asked to name all his sexual partners, they and their children were tested.

Her growth was stunted, and she had anemia and lung problems. There were no drugs for AIDS at the time, but in 1990 she and her mother were moved to the country’s first sanitarium, in Santiago de Las Vegas, near Havana, and she grew up there.