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Ever felt the urge to get up and disappear to some remote corner of the globe - just you, your rucksack and the open road? Worried that your HIV status might hold you back? Laurence Gibson guides you through a safer journey on the cheap
There are many things to consider when you travel abroad. As an HIV positive person, do you need a visa to get in? How do you store your medication, especially in hot temperatures without a fridge? What’s the standard of medical treatment available in the countries you are visiting if you become ill? Which travel insurance to take? The list is endless.
Find out about insurance
For travel insurance, there are several companies that cover for positive people.
Easy! Travel Insurance is one of the more comprehensive ones, offering cover to
anyone infected with HIV, irrespective of CD4, viral load or previous Aids diagnoses.
"If you get ill and don't like the idea of being treated in the country you are in - which may have a varying level of treatment - or you don't want to go through your medical history with a foreign doctor, then we will organise a flight back straight away," says Kevin Waite, owner of Easy! Travel Insurance.
Other travel insurers include Freedom Travel Insurance and Worldfirst (at Rothwell and Towler) - see end for details.
No matter how high your CD4 count, you should always get cover that acknowledges your HIV infection, as Louise Kane, from Manchester, found out.
"I was on a road trip around eastern Europe," she explains. "We were going everywhere, from Germany to Russia.
"We got as far as Krakow, in Poland, when I got a really nasty bronchial infection that wouldn't go away. The insurance policy I took out before did not specifically ask about whether or not I was HIV positive, so I hadn't told them.
"When I told the doctors in Poland about my status they, in turn, must have told the insurance company, who wouldn't arrange for a flight back when there were 'adequate' medical services in Poland to deal with a bronchial infection.
"I had to get my mother to pay for the flight home, in the end, but at least she was there to help. Imagine if I didn't have any resources at all!"
In the US, too, it is of the utmost importance to get adequate cover, as Patrick Johnson found out:
"We had no insurance and not much money. We'd been staying with friends in Silicon Valley near San Francisco but decided to go to Los Angeles.
"The third day we were there, Paul started coming down with terrible chest pains and a fever of 104°. It turned out to be bacterial pneumonia. I remember us lying on Venice Beach in LA and looking at the sunset and me wondering if that was the last one he'd see!
"There was a gay nurse in our hotel who said the Hollywood Presbyterian was the best hospital around, it was where all the film stars went.
"So I drove him to the emergency room. I remember there was a very prominent bronze plaque saying they'd fulfilled their legal quota for treating individuals free on a charitable basis and Paul, who was very stubborn, simply refused to leave. He told the doctor the only way he was going to leave that night was dead.
"They eventually agreed to admit him 'for now' at which point a wonderful gay consultant appeared and told the hospital to forget the fees for now. He stayed there 10 days.
"They made us sign a bill for $20,000 before he left but never chased it up. All we had to pay was $120 for a week's supply of drugs. I wonder if they lied to our travel insurers (we did have the normal kind) or just forgot about it. If it hadn't been for the gay consultant, he could easily have died in LA."
Be careful about restrictions and pills
If you only want to travel around Europe then you've got it made, relatively speaking.
Within the EU, there are no restrictions on where an HIV positive traveller can
go, and no visa requirements. Just pack your bag, pack your pills and off you
go.
However, it's not quite that simple in other corners of the globe. In some parts of Asia, Egypt and 29 of the African countries, for example, homosexuality is still illegal - so God knows what they think of us positive folk.
Indeed, there are many relatively undeveloped nations who have no firm stance on HIV, as if it simply does not exist.
Paul Ashton from Hackney, London, recently went to the Republic of Georgia, one of the countries that made up the former Soviet bloc:
"I take T-20" he explains, "and I turned up at Tbilisi Airport, manned by aggressive people with rifles - with a whole bunch of needles, my little T-20 vials and all the normal pills in my rucksack!
"There was a whole load of fuss at the airport about my visa, which I had to get in advance, but I was never asked about HIV. Thankfully, they just let me through without examining my hand luggage; otherwise, who knows what could have happened. I could have been thrown away without the key.
"There was a whole load of fuss at the airport about my visa, which I had to get in advance, but I was never asked about HIV. Thankfully, they just let me through without examining my hand luggage; otherwise, who knows what could have happened. I could have been thrown away without the key.
"Once I was inside Georgia it was even more difficult. Having to take my pills at various times a day, with food restrictions, is complicated enough - especially when you are in a foreign environment. But I had to inject twice a day, somewhere 'clean', and had to explain to whoever was around at the time what I was doing.
"In the end, I just made up a story that I was diabetic, and left it at that. I was in Georgia visiting my boyfriend, and homosexuality is basically illegal out there - so I was petrified what would happen if anyone found out about my HIV status."
If it is the bright lights of the USA that you are after, then you may have to consider carefully how you are going to get your medication into the country, if you are not going to disclose your status and get a visa.
If you do want to apply for a visa - but why should you, you are a British citizen without a criminal record, after all? - then generally you will not have a problem obtaining one. Although the final decision rests with US immigration.
If you are travelling without a visa and on medication, then you need to be careful about your pills. Get a letter from your doctor explaining simply: "It is necessary for the patient to be in possession of prescribed medication", then, more than likely, you will just be waved in.
Alternatively, you can send them all out in advance to an address in the US. Or candidly hide the pills in aspirin boxes, pack them in your bags and hope for the best.
If you are visiting countries outside of the EU and are unsure whether or not you need a visa, then visit the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website listed at the bottom of this article.
On the site is a section on 'travel advice' that lists 'country advice' for 220 countries around the globe, and states if HIV is a problem in the 'entry requirements' passage.
So whether it's a road trip around Europe, a safari around Africa or a hike around the Himalayas, please just do one thing: be careful.
Visit: www.fco.gov.uk
Easy! Travel Insurance: 0870 345 3451
Worldfirst (Rothwell & Towler): 01404 41234
Freedom Travel Insurance: 0870 774 3760
