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Discrimination against HIV babies is continuing

An AIDS charity yesterday said that some local government-run social welfare departments and non-governmental organizations (NGO) were refusing to care for babies born to HIV-positive mothers before they were 18 months old, the age at which HIV tests are deemed reliable.

"Our facilities can only handle kids up to a year old," said May Chyou (邱淑美), executive director of the Garden of Mercy Foundation, which runs an AIDS hospice and a nursery for babies born to HIV-positive mothers who have either abandoned or cannot care for them.

"When the babies turn one year old and have tested negative for HIV, we try and get social welfare departments and other NGOs to take over. But on some occasions we have been turned down on the grounds that they cannot be certain the child is HIV-negative until he or she is 18 months old," she said.

Chyou declined to give the names of the departments and organizations involved.

The Department of Health, she said, should apprise welfare organizations of the improved quality of testing so that they will agree to take HIV-negative babies from one year of age.

Asked for comments, Center for Disease Control deputy director Lin Ding (林頂) said that with the new tests, "we can conclusively determine whether a child is HIV-positive at age one in 60 percent to 80 percent of children. The rest will have to wait until they reach 18 months of age."

"But that's beside the point. HIV should not be a criteria in these cases, period," Lin told the Taipei Times during a telephone interview. "Institutions have no business asking whether a baby is HIV-positive before giving it the care it requires. In fact, it is illegal."

Under the recently amended AIDS Control Act (後天免疫缺乏症候群防治條例), it is illegal for welfare organizations to discriminate against babies who may have HIV.

Chyou, however, said that in reality, fear and prejudice of HIV-positive people and babies cannot be legislated away.
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