Immigration system puts children
at risk
Up to 250 children living with HIV are suffering physical and emotional ill
health because they are entangled in the UK immigration system, according
to new research. Children’s support charities fear around 70 of these
HIV positive children are at particular risk because they have lost contact
with their families .
The National Children’s Bureau report, Children, HIV, Asylum and Immigration,
said some of the most vulnerable kids in the country were suffering because
of the UK’s draconian immigration policies.
Some families were afraid to seek health care for fear of being deported,
NCB chief executive Paul Ennals said.
The report, launched at a recent All Party Parliamentary Group on Aids (APPGA)
meeting, highlighted the dangers to children and young people with HIV under
the present system and made recommendations to improve their lot.
Speakers recounted horror stories about HIV positive children locked up in
immigration detention centres, some without medicines, and then deported to
a certain death.
Neil Gerrard, MP for Walthamstow and chair of the APPGA, said government policy
enabled people with uncertain immigration status to get free NHS treatments
for TB and sexually transmitted infections but not for HIV.
“HIV is not on the list and clearly ought to be,” Mr Gerrard said.
HIV charities have been campaigning to get this rule reversed on human rights
and public health grounds.
Lisa Nandy, of the Children’s Refugee Consortium, said the British asylum
process was characterised by “complexity, uncertainty and confusion”.
“Children in this process are often invisible and their views and welfare
are rarely taken into account.”
There were few safeguards for children with HIV and government immigration
controls took precedence over children’s welfare,” Ms Nandy added.
The Home Office has actively targeted families with children for deportation
and several families where one or more member has HIV have been driven underground.
Dr Rana Chakraborty, senior paediatric and HIV consultant at St George’s
Hospital, London, said he saw some children with HIV who were also suffering
from post traumatic stress disorder after experiencing family killings in
central Africa.
“Health often comes at the bottom of the list for families worried about
housing, food and immigration status,” he said.
CHIVA (Children’s HIV Association) reports some 1,400 children with
HIV are living in the UK, half in London and the south-east. Two thirds are
on antiretroviral therapies and, of those, four fifths have an undetectable
viral load and are doing well.
But families with HIV positive children caught up in the immigration process
often present late for HIV treatments putting them at greater risk of dying.
The dispersal system, which places asylum seekers in different places around
the country, often at short notice, also means children with HIV miss out
on decent health care.
Martin Narey, former head of the UK Prisons Service, now chief executive of
Barnardo’s, lamented Britain’s “obsession with locking up
young people in prison”.
He recounted the case of a Malawian deported after an asylum judge said HIV
treatments were available in that country when in fact only one in sixty of
the country’s 1.8 million HIV positive population had access to them.
“Old colleagues at the Home Office have told me that allowing HIV positive
children to remain in the UK would cause a pull factor and Britain would then
attract health tourism,” Mr Narey added.
• ‘Children, HIV, Asylum & Immigration’ is available
from National Children’s Bureau, www.ncb.org.uk/hiv
• Are your children at danger because of Britain’s immigration
policies? Let Positive Nation know.
MP takes public HIV test
Minister for culture David Lammy (centre), MP for Tottenham, took a public
HIV test at St Ann’s Hospital in his constituency on World Aids Day,
to highlight the need for testing among African communities.
“The African community in Britain is a group particularly affected by
the virus, but due to significant social stigmas around getting tested, far
too many people don’t feel they can,” he said. Lammy took the
test as part of an initiative from the African HIV Policy Network. www.ahpn.org
Poverty rife among people living with HIV
Poverty
is rising among people living with HIV in Britain and high levels of stigma
and discrimination are partly to blame.
A new report from Crusaid and the National Aids Trust (NAT) highlights how
hate crimes and discrimination drive people living with HIV into poverty and
isolation.
The average weekly income for people with HIV has fallen from £93 in
1999 to £63 in 2006, according to the Crusaid Hardship Fund report.
HIV positive people were living in substandard housing and were unable to
afford even basic food and clothing thanks to government policies restricting
asylum seekers’ right to work and low benefits, the report found.
It called for action to tackle high levels of hate crime, unemployment and
poor housing among people living with HIV.
Neil Gerrard, MP for Walthamstow and chair of the All Party Parliamentary
Group on Aids (APPGA), said HIV and poverty in Britain were inextricably linked
– just like the rest of the world.
Robin Brady, chief executive of Crusaid, said: “Poverty isn’t
something which just happens in Africa, it happens here in the UK. And many
Africans applying to the Fund have absolutely no income at all.”
Brady explained that the Hardship Fund was very much ‘a fund of last
resort’. It has given out £7.8 million over the last 20 years
and none of the money came from the government. Since 1986, the Crusaid has
helped a third of people diagnosed with HIV in the UK.
Deborah Jack, chief executive of NAT, said the Hardship Fund was a lifeline
for many people.
“If you’re living with HIV, poverty means you can’t afford
to eat,” she said.
“Supporting people into work is one of the best ways to get them out
of poverty and letting asylum seekers work would also help many.”
• www.crusaid.org.uk
or
• www.nat.org.uk
Record numbers with HIV now in UK
An
estimated 63,500 adults are now living with HIV in the UK and around 21,000
of these remain unaware of their infection.
And with a further 1,650 diagnoses in adults over 60 and another 800 in children
under 15, the true figure is actually closer to 66,000.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) released the new HIV figures on World Aids
Day in a report called A Complex Picture, showing over 7,450 new cases of
HIV had been diagnosed in 2005.
There was a slight reduction in new heterosexual HIV cases, which represent
54 per cent of new infections. But 2005 saw a large increase among gay men,
now accounting for 32 per cent.
“We are seeing an ever increasing pool of people living with HIV in
the UK,” said Dr Valerie Delpech of the HPA.
“This is due to people living longer due to advances in treatment, sustained
levels of infection in gay men, further diagnoses among heterosexuals who
acquired their infection in Africa, and cases being picked up earlier.”
Last year there were more new HIV infections in gay men in Britain than ever
before. Three in every hundred gay men who attended an STI clinic in 2005
were diagnosed with HIV, making Britain and London in particular Europe’s
HIV hotspot.
“There are clear data showing safer sex messages are not being adhered
to in the gay community,” Dr Noel Gill said.
Black and ethnic minority people accounted for two thirds of the new infections
and most acquired their infection in Africa, the HPA said.
Many infections are still being diagnosed late, making treatments less effective
and reducing life expectancy.
news on the side
Charity averts sex ad ban
A solitary complaint levelled against an ad produced by gay men’s health
charity GMFA that said: “I'd rather fuck than watch TV” was not
upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority. In the interests of public
health The Pink Paper continued to run the ad despite an initial ban. The
ad was deemed neither offensive nor inappropriate.
New gay insurance guide
The Association of British Insurers has launched a new consumer guide for
gay men. Dealing with HIV and life insurance, it lays to rest the common misconception
that just taking an HIV test will have an impact on insurance applications.
Strict new guidelines ensure only relevant information is taken into account.
www.abi.org.uk
Gay docs protest
The Gay and Lesbian Association of Doctors and Dentists has condemned the
lack of clarity surrounding the roles of regulatory bodies and the lack of
support and advice they can expect when dealing with blood-borne infections.
The Health Protection Agency has also drawn attention to the need for better
protection for health care workers.
Plea for sexier condom ads
A sexier, more pleasure-focused approach to promoting condoms could increase
safer sex practices and lower rates of infection, according to the December
issue of The Lancet. Pleasure, and even sex itself, has been conspicuously
absent from much of the dialogue surrounding the spread of HIV, the article
suggests.
Gay teens have sex earlier
Fifty-eight per cent of gay teens have sex before the legal age of 16 and
23 per cent have sex at 13 years old or younger, according to the annual Sex
Life survey carried out by gay teen website www.puffta.co.uk. The survey failed
to point out that all teenagers in Britain have always had sex at an early
age.
Patient record fears
Over half of GPs said they would not upload patients' records without their
explicit consent and 79 per cent believed the new computerised national care
records system could damage confidentiality, according to British Medical
Journal. Patients with HIV fear confidential sexual health records will now
be shared with police and council workers.
STIs on rise
Syphilis is on the increase in the UK with new cases rising 23 per cent, from
2,282 in 2004 to 2,810 in 2005. The Health Protection Agency said the number
of detected syphilis cases were probably the tip of the iceberg. If left untreated,
syphilis can cause organ failure, mental illness and death. New cases of gonorrhoea
declined by 13 per cent but new diagnoses of all sexually transmitted infections
in Britain were up. www.hpa.org.uk
UK’s hep C ‘time bomb’
The number of people newly diagnosed with hepatitis C has leapt from 2,116
in 1996 to 7,580 in 2005 according to latest Health Protection Agency figures.
Estimates suggest 231,000 people were living with hep C in Britain in 2003
but experts think there are double that. The Hepatitis C Trust says the UK
faces a hepatitis C time bomb.
• For the latest news from the UK HIV sector,
Medics face death
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor have once again been sentenced
to death for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV. The medics have
been in detention since 1999 and so far 52 of the 426 children have died from
Aids-related illnesses. The six were originally sentenced to death in 2004
but the Libyan Supreme Court overturned the sentences after defence claims
that confessions were extracted under torture. The defendants say they are
being made scapegoats for unhygienic practices at a Benghazi hospital.
A lifetime's cost of pills
A lifetime's treatment for HIV in the US is now estimated to be $618,900,
according to November's issue of Medical Care. People are now expected to
live on average 24.2 years on HIV therapy. However, the study did not quantify
the benefit to the economy of people with HIV staying out of hospital, in
work and paying taxes.
US u-turn on pos visitors
The White House chose World Aids Day to announce that President Bush would
issue an order allowing HIV positive people to enter the US on short-term
tourist or business visas without having to seek special permission. No international
HIV conferences have been held in the US since the ban on HIV positive visitors
was introduced in 1990. It remains unclear how the new special waiver for
HIV positive visitors to the US will work out in practice.
Aids cure scam exposed
BBC’s Panorama has exposed a fake cure for HIV being promoted in Swaziland.
The scam, based on ‘goat serum’, was spotted by Swazi-born actor
Richard E Grant who became suspicious after receiving a brochure from a company
called Commercial African Resources Development, run by British businessman
Michael Hart Jones.
