The top Chinese health official at the XVII International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Mexico City says that China will likely lift its decades-old policy banning visitors with HIV/AIDS some time next year, the China Daily reports.
Positive people have long been discriminated against in foreign travel. Since the 1990s, delegates to the IAC have been calling for travel restrictions to be overturned.
“Government agencies, including the Ministry of Health and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, have reached consensus on the issue,” says Hao Yang, deputy director of the ministry’s disease control and prevention bureau. “The HIV/AIDS restrictions will be lifted in 2009.”
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Beth Benne, RN, is HIV negative, but
the virus has impacted her life. She currently supervises a biannual HIV/AIDS awareness week as
the director of the student health center at Pierce College, a
community commuter school in Woodland Hills, California.
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Overheard in the Women's Forum
"I recently met a guy who is negative. I did tell him about my status and he decided to kiss me anyway (we didn't go further than that). But a day later, he called and said that he actually had a mouth ulcer that time when we kissed and he was very worried. Asked if he can get the virus from me that way. For that moment, I felt so insulted and yet I felt so bad. It was my first time having a contact with a "negative" guy."
