Prime Minister
John Howard said Friday people with the AIDS virus should
not be allowed to migrate to Australia, and the government
was investigating whether it could tighten existing
restrictions. The comments triggered anger among AIDS
workers, who accused Howard of xenophobia and of
blaming sufferers for their illness.
Asked in a radio
interview whether people with HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS, should be allowed into Australia as migrants or
refugees, Howard said he would like to take "more
counsel" on the issue but added, "My initial reaction
is no." However, he said there may be "humanitarian
considerations" in certain cases.
"I think we
should have the most stringent possible conditions in
relation to that nationwide, and I know the health minister
is concerned about that and is examining ways of
tightening things up," Howard said.
Howard was asked
about the issue during a visit to Melbourne, the capital
of Victoria state, where the state health minister said this
week that 70 of the 334 new HIV infection cases
reported in Victoria in 2006 were among immigrants who
had arrived in the country with the virus.
Australia has
long had restrictions on people who try to immigrate who
have health problems that could threaten to spread disease
or impose an additional burden on the public health
system.
Don Baxter of the
nongovernment group the Australian Federation of AIDS
Organizations said HIV tests are already among health checks
for prospective immigrants and that most HIV-positive
applicants are rejected. "It's very tight already,"
Baxter told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Chris Lemoh, an
infectious disease specialist who is working on a
doctorate on the spread of AIDS among African immigrants in
Victoria, said excluding people with HIV should be
condemned. "It's a hysterical overreaction, it mixes
racism with a phobia about infectious disease," he
said. "To not allow people to come on the basis of any
health condition is immoral. It's unethical, and it's
impractical to enforce."
Many countries,
including the United States, impose restrictions on
immigration and visa approvals for people with HIV, though
there are often exceptions in special cases.
AIDS was first
diagnosed in Australia in the early 1980s, and the disease
has mostly been concentrated in large cities such as Sydney
and among people belonging to high-risk groups such as
gay men and needle-sharing drug addicts.
The National
Center for HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research said in an
October 2006 report that since it was first detected, 25,703
infections had been reported in Australia, of which
9,827 people developed full-blown AIDS and 6,621 had
died. (Rohan Sullivan, AP)
