While the need for long-term care for people with HIV is increasing as they age, an advocacy group has found that the nation’s nursing homes are largely unwelcoming of HIV-positive residents, with more than 90 percent of Taipei and New Taipei City facilities refusing to take in people with the condition.
The Persons with HIV/AIDS Rights Advocacy Association (PRAA), has conducted surveys about the human rights violations of people with HIV since 2012, and this year’s survey, released yesterday by Soochow University Social Work assistant professor Chung Dau-chuan (鍾道詮), found that about 70 percent of the people with HIV surveyed said they have experienced human rights violations in the past two years.
“Among the 1,001 people who responded to the survey, almost half — 484 people — said they had experienced rights violations when receiving medical care. Of these, 293 said they had refrained from going to doctors for other illnesses because of their HIV status, and 162 had encountered poor attitudes from staff at hospitals,” Chung said.
“The second-most common type of rights infringement was privacy-related, and 39.26 percent of those polled had suffered this kind of violation,” Chung said.
The survey found that complaints over employment rights were third-most common, followed by those over intimate relationships.
“Sixty percent of those who said they faced violations relating to intimate relationships revealed that they had been informed not to have sexual intercourse at all by public health or medical staff, and 33 percent [40 respondents] said they had been asked to undergo an abortion or not to have children,” Chung said.
However, the group said that the original survey found that relatively few people had encountered problems with admission to nursing homes, which it said was counter-intuitive, so it conducted another survey particularly focused on this issue.
PRAA secretary-general Lin Yi-hui (林宜慧) said 314 of a total of 318 private and public nursing homes in Taipei and New Taipei City were contacted, and 92 percent, or 288, had refused to accept people with HIV as residents without conditions.
Among the reasons offered were that there was “no appropriate equipment;” that “staff would be afraid;” that “regulations stipulate no HIV-infected people should be accepted;” or “residents with HIV would cause group infection.”
“Of the 26 that did not say no to our inquiry immediately, nine said the prospective residents with HIV would be required to dwell in quarantined rooms with extra fees imposed. Four said their institutions ‘do not conduct tests for HIV so there is no question of rejection.’ For seven, test for HIV is required; they did not say yes or no explicitly but only said application is possible,” Lin said.
Underscoring the increase in the need for nursing home places for people with HIV in the past two to three years, Lin said that the relevant authorities have not been putting enough effort into the issue, especially when the burden has so far been shouldered by private institutions such as Harmony Home Association and the Garden of Mercy Foundation.
When asked about the predicament faced by HIV-positive people in need of nursing care, Ministry of Health and Welfare Department of Nursing and Healthcare Director-General Teng Su-wen (鄧素文) said officials had meetings on the issue early in the year, which concluded that if those in need have difficulties finding a place they can seek help from their local health or social welfare departments.
Agreeing with Teng that no institution should reject people with HIV and citing the HIV Infection Control and Patient Rights Protection Act (人類免疫缺乏病毒傳染防治及感染者權益保障條例) that stipulates “there shall be no discrimination, no denial of education, medical care, employment, nursing home, housing or any other unfair treatment,” Social and Family Administration Deputy Director-General Chen Su-chun (陳素春) said the authorities would continue to promote correct information about HIV/AIDS and emphasized that punishment would be meted out on those found to be in violation of the act.
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