expenses arising from the recurrent illnesses, which would result in an expenditure of around four hundred and eighty million quetzals (Q.480,000.000.00) each year to provide treatment to these people. They also asked the Constitutional Court to issue an order requesting useful evidence to ratify the connection that existed between the violation of the human rights in question and the applicants for amparo, because all of them were affected by the deficient medical care and the absence of antiretroviral treatment in their capacity as people living with HIV/AIDS. Lastly, they asked the Constitutional Court to declare the application for amparo admissible and to order the State to enact public policies that guaranteed the collective right to life of people living with HIV/AIDS and the distribution of antiretroviral drugs, without any discrimination, in the country’s hospitals and health centers.54 62. In a ruling of January 29, 2003, the Constitutional Court considered that the applicants had accepted that the Constitutional President of the Republic of Guatemala, at a meeting on August 20, 2002, had received the applicants’ representatives and had ordered the immediate transfer of a special appropriation of five hundred thousand quetzals (Q.500,000.00) for the treatment of people in need living with HIV/AIDS for, at least, the last quarter of that year while the State developed a serious and committed policy in relation to the future situation of the applicants, and that the said transfer had been made from the Ministry of Public Finance to the Ministry of Public Health on September 2, 2002. Consequently, it argued that the grievance had ceased and, therefore, the application filed was unsubstantiated. Accordingly, it declared that the application was without merit.55 VIII. MERITS 63. The Court recalls that this case refers to 49 people who are or were living with HIV in Guatemala, and their next of kin. Of these people, 15 were deceased, 34 were still alive, and, in its Merits Report, the Commission had considered some of their next of kin as presumed victims. It is a proven fact that the 49 presumed victims were diagnosed with HIV between 1992 and 2004, and that most of them had not received public medical care prior to 2004. In addition, it has been proved that some of them suffered from one or several of the following conditions: they had contracted opportunistic infections and, in some cases, they had died due to such infections; they were people with limited resources; they were mothers or fathers who provided their families with financial and/or moral support; they were poorly educated; the effects of their condition as people living with HIV did not allow them to continue the activities they had carried out before becoming infected; they lived in areas located far from the clinics where they should receive medical care, and some of them were pregnant women. Taking the foregoing into consideration, the Court will examine and decide the merits of the dispute. 64. Consequently, the Court will proceed to examine: (i) whether the State is responsible for violating the right to health owing to the medical care – or lack of it – provided by the State to the 49 presumed victims as people living with HIV, and also (ii) whether the State violated the principle of progressivity owing to the alleged retrogressive measures it adopted that prejudiced the full realization of the right to health in Guatemala. In addition, the Court will assess whether the State (iii) violated the rights to personal integrity and to life of the 49 presumed victims, and (iv) owing to the ruling of the Constitutional Court, it Cf. Brief of October 29, 2002, outlining the arguments of the applicants during the hearing (evidence file, folios 61-66). 54 55 Cf. Ruling of the Constitutional Court of January 29, 2003 (evidence file, folio 82). 21