HIV-infected foreigners are still not allowed to be employed in Singapore, but since Apr 1 they have been allowed to hold a short-term visa allowing them to stay here a maximum of three months.
The repatriation and blacklisting of HIV-infected people was first implemented in the late 1980s, when the disease was still new. This was when HIV was still new, fatal, and no effective treatment was available, a Ministry of Health spokesman told the Associated Press.
But why is a short term visa okay and long term not?
The spokesman explained that a short-term visit “poses very low additional risk of HIV transmission to the local population,” whereas “the public health risk posed by long-stayers is not insignificant.”
More than 5,000 Singapore residents are currently living with HIV and effective treatment — not eradication — of the disease is now available.
“We need a supportive environment that does not discriminate a person because he or she is HIV infected. The repeal of the short-term entry ban is one such example of what we need to do,” Roy Chan, the president of local voluntary group Action for Aids, told AP.
Photo: Flickr/Dm-Photograhy.De
