HIV DISCRIMINATION ALIVE AND WELL

A student is turned away by a school while a journalist is thrown out of Qatar; highlighting continued discrimination against HIV positive people.

On Thursday it was revealed that an un-named South African journalist was deported from the Gulf state of Qatar because he is HIV positive.

He was hired by the Al Jazeera news network and when he arrived in the country was told by the broadcaster to undergo a HIV test.

When the company discovered he is positive he was detained in a prison and subjected to a full body search, allegedly in front of other prisoners. He was then released, fired from his job and given 48 hours to leave the country.

Qatar is one of 49 countries around the world that have restrictions on HIV positive people entering their borders.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., a 13-year-old student, represented by the AIDS Law Project, has filed a suit against a school for discrimination after it refused him admission because he is HIV positive.

The Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania admitted that it rejected the un-named boy’s application because of his HIV status.

School officials at the private boarding school insist that they did so to protect the well-being of other students.

“In order to protect our children in this unique environment, we cannot accommodate the needs of students with chronic communicable diseases that pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others,” said the school in a statement.

“I feel no other teenager should go through this, being denied just because they have HIV,” the boy said in an interview with NBC Philadelphia.

According to the National Association of State Boards of Education, “the presence of a person living with HIV infection or diagnosed with AIDS poses no significant risk to others in school, day care, or school athletic settings”.