UAE deports 1,500 HIV sufferers

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The UAE deported more than 1,500 people with HIV, hepatitis B and C and tuberculosis in 2008, a new report said on Thursday and criticised many countries around the world for failure to protect sick migrants.

Those criticised included the United States, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and South Africa and the report urged governments to commit to the goal of universal access to HIV treatment for all who need it by 2010.

"With 192 million people - or 3 percent of the world's population - living outside their place of birth, ensuring migrants' and deportees' access to HIV treatment is absolutely essential to meeting this goal,” said Titise Kode, who works for African HIV Policy Network, which formed part of the multi-agency group that authored the study.

Saudi Arabia, which has mandatory HIV testing, also came under fire with the report claiming people were detained "for up to a year without access to medication" and HIV-positive migrants were deported.

The report offered no comparative figures for those deported because of HIV or other diseases around the globe or on a year-on-year basis.

"Migrants living with HIV are often explicitly excluded from treatment," said Katherine Todrys, researcher with the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. "If they are detained, they are often denied access to antiretroviral drugs, and then if deported they can’t get care."

The report said national deportation procedures were often insufficient to protect those with HIV from being forced to return to countries where there was a risk of being tortured or subjected to "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment".

This happens despite long established international human rights and refugee law prohibiting such deportations, the report added.

The report also criticised the United States for poor access to treatment it offered to people in detention centres, as well as the "harsh conditions" and "lack of access to medical treatment for some HIV-positive individuals who are deported".

The multi-agency report was prepared by Human Rights Watch, Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe, the European AIDS Treatment Group and the African HIV Policy Network.

The group called on governments to ensure access to treatment for those awaiting deportation. It also urged the re-examination of deporting those with HIV to countries where treatment and social support structures were inadequate.

"Migrants face enormous risks when they cross borders," said David Hans-Ulrich Haerry, of the European AIDS Treatment Group.

"But they shouldn't face a death sentence for living with HIV when we have effective treatment available and governments worldwide have pledged to provide universal access to antiretroviral medicine and have committed themselves to international treaties that guarantee migrants protection."

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