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EPIDEMICS
Calls for end to discrimination on World AIDS Day

Activists protest S.Korea's HIV testing for foreign workers
Seoul (AFP) Dec 1, 2009 - Activists Tuesday filed a petition with South Korea's human rights watchdog, seeking an end to mandatory HIV tests for some foreign workers. A group representing HIV carriers, a migrants' trade union and three other rights groups said in their petition that the policy breaches the rights of migrant workers, according to the National Human Rights Commission which received the document. Foreign applicants must prove they do not have HIV to qualify for work in the entertainment sector or low-skilled industries in South Korea. But local workers are not required to do so, Amnesty International says. South Korea also requires HIV testing of would-be language teachers from overseas.

The Ministry of Labour obliges all low-skilled work applicants to submit physical examination results including HIV testing in their countries of origin. Upon arrival in South Korea, they are tested a second time for HIV and if positive are subject to deportation, Amnesty said in a report published in October. Such practices are "in breach of the rights to human worth and dignity and rights to work" the five groups said in the petition filed to coincide with World AIDS Day. They said discrimination against foreigners on grounds of nationality, social status or illness was in breach of the constitution.

"According to South Korea's AIDS prevention law, a person's consent is required before testing for HIV. But foreign workers are made to receive health checks without being informed that they include a HIV test," Youn Gabriel, the head of Nanuri+, an HIV carriers' group, said. "Even foreigners who have received work permits are deported from the country if they test positive for HIV," Youn was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. More than 600 foreigners have been forced to leave since the late 1980s, he said. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has urged South Korea to remove emigration and immigration controls on foreigners with HIV, noting it is one of 12 countries in the world with such restrictions.
by Staff Writers
 Pretoria (AFP) Dec 1, 2009
 Calls for an end to discrimination against sufferers rang out on World AIDS Day on Tuesday as South Africa, the country worst affected by the pandemic, rolled out a new plan to beat the virus.

With more than 33 million people round the world carrying the virus, China said the incidence among homosexuals was gaining pace while there were warnings in Europe that heterosexual contacts had become the chief transmission route.

And French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy lent her star power to the global campaign against AIDS, revealing how she witnessed first-hand the effect of the virus on the fashion industry and her brother.

In China President Hu Jintao called on people in the world's most populous nation not to discriminate against those with HIV.

You "must care more and better for AIDS patients and people living with HIV, and in particular guide society into not discriminating against them," Hu told AIDS prevention volunteers in Beijing, comments broadcast by state television.

Levels of stigma and discrimination against sufferers remain high in large parts of Asia such as South Korea where many foreign workers are forced to undergo mandatory HIV tests to secure visas.

In an annual report released last week, the UN said that around two million people died of the disease in 2008, bringing the overall toll to around 25 million since the virus was first detected three decades ago.

Almost 60 million people have been infected by the HIV virus since it was first recorded, the UNAIDS agency said in its report, putting the total number of people currently living with the virus at 33.4 million.

South Africa remains the world's worst-hit country, a status which many campaigners have attributed to a history of "denialism" within government.

President Jacob Zuma, who was then head of the National AIDS Council, provoked ridicule three years ago when he said that he had showered to wash away the risk of AIDS after having sex with an HIV-positive woman.

But since then, Zuma has been trying to reshape his image and used World AIDS Day to announce a raft of new measures to rein in the disease that has hit 5.7 million of South Africa's 48 million people.

"Let today be the dawn of a new era. Let there be no more shame, no more blame, no more discrimination and no more stigma," he said in his speech.

The most eye-catching announcement from Zuma was that all babies with HIV would receive anti-retroviral treatment.

"All children under one year of age will get treatment if they test positive," Zuma said.

He also announced expanded treatment for pregnant women, in a bid to prevent the transmission of HIV to their children.

In China, where there have been nearly 50,000 recorded deaths from AIDS, the health ministry said homosexual transmission of the disease was gathering pace and urged authorities to step up prevention work.

"Sexual contact continues to be the main channel of transmission with the speed of homosexual transmission clearly increasing," the health ministry said.

But in a sign the epidemic is mutating differently in other parts of the world, authorities in Ukraine -- one of Europe's worst affected countries -- said heterosexual contacts had become the chief transmission route.

The French first lady, an ambassador for the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, also spoke out Tuesday, talking of the devastating effect of the virus on the fashion industry in the 1980s.

Recounting her years as a supermodel, Bruni-Sarkozy told TV5Monde television "the fashion world was hit head-on by the AIDS pandemic. It really did lose members of its family."

Bruni-Sarkozy lost her brother Virginio to AIDS in 2006.

In Russia, one of Europe's hardest-hit countries, some 200 people demonstrated in Moscow, calling for increased AIDS prevention measures among young people and more tolerance for HIV sufferers.

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