Locked in solitary confinement. Denied medical treatment that their peers have access to several times per week. Allowed to brush their teeth only every other day, and not permitted to wear shoes or socks or walk outside.
These are just some of the conditions cited by HIV-positive inmates of Taiwan's prisons.
"When I first got in, I was given a blood test. Then I was put in a separate cell," said Mr. Lin, who was released last month after serving a one-year sentence in the Tainan Detention Center.
Lin, who found out he was HIV- positive after a mandatory blood test in prison, did not see a doctor once during his year-long term. During that time, his status deteriorated from being positive for the virus to nearing the level of full-blown AIDS.
He and the other HIV-positive inmates who served shorter sentences at the facility said they were also denied daily walks in the prison yard.
Their cell, which neighbored another separate one housing inmates with tuberculosis, was marked with a sign reading "AIDS Ward." They said they were also denied contact with other inmates.
Lin's humiliation did not end with his sentence, either. On his release, the facility notified the local health authority of the status of his disease. It then sent copies of the same document to local police -- and his family members.
"I thought about killing myself. For a while, I was very unstable," Lin said yesterday.
His case is by no means singular. HIV-positive inmates' basic freedoms and right to privacy are often grossly violated, say local AIDS groups.
Indeed, a steady stream of cases is coming out of Taiwan's prisons, said Dr. Arthur Chen (
Chen also heads Living With Hope, a local NGO which conducts bimonthly visits to HIV-positive prison inmates.
One inmate in a Taitung correctional facility last year was housed in a windowless lock-up ordinarily used for inmates who misbehaved, he said.
When the man repeatedly asked for medical attention, guards dressed in biohazard suits chained his arms and legs in order to move him to and from a hospital in Taitung.
Medical care for inmates with HIV varies widely in Taiwan's prisons, Chen said. In the bigger facilities, such as the Taipei Prison in Taoyuan County, more inmates with the virus have attracted more attention to the issue.
A doctor from the Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital visits the eight HIV-positive inmates at the prison several times per month and can prescribe drugs such as AZT. Other facilities, however, lack adequate medical staff. The Tainan Prison is the only correctional facility in Taiwan that has a full-time doctor on staff.
Educating prison staff is an urgent task, AIDS activists say.
Living Care Association director Liu Hsiao-hua (劉?p華) said guards were shocked when she hugged an HIV-positive inmate at Taichung Detention Center during one of her organization's routine visits. "The people who need protecting are those who are HIV-positive, not us," she said. Persons with AIDS are vulnerable to colds or other viruses brought in from the outside, she said.
The Ministry of Justice, in a statement issued last night, said HIV-positive inmates are not allowed group or outdoor activities because Taiwan law considers the virus a communicable disease.
Inmates with HIV, just like those with tuberculosis, are housed separately for the same reason, it said.
The ministry said it also kept its legal obligation to provide regular medical care to Lin by sending him to Tainan's Cheng Kung University Hospital. The reason he was not given care there was that his health insurance coverage had lapsed during his sentence and he could not afford to pay, it said.
The ministry said that informing local police and Lin's family of his status is legal, citing Article 87 of the criminal code.
According to official statistics, 77 of Taiwan's estimated 55,000 prison inmates tested positive for HIV last year during mandatory blood screening in prisons. There are 2,375 people nationwide with the virus.
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