MPs criticise HIV asylum care
MPs have warned that the Government’s asylum policies may be increasing the risk of HIV transmission and have recommended better access to testing and treatment for asylum seekers and immigrants .
An all-party parliamentary group on Aids warned that dispersing asylum seekers across the UK and detaining them is resulting in many people with HIV not receiving suitable medical care.
The MPs were told that the National Asylum Support Services (Nass) ignored advice from HIV experts, which increased the risks of people passing on HIV and other serious diseases. They have warned that the Government should not detain people with serious communicable diseases if it is unable to care for them in removal centres
MP Neil Gerrard, who chaired the group, said they found that such policies can negatively impact upon the physical and mental health of asylum seekers.
‘In most cases, we found there to be a complete lack of communication between the Home Office, NASS and social services, which may be putting asylum seekers in situations where they can become more ill or develop resistance to treatment,’ he explained.
The report also included evidence from doctors who claimed the NASS consistently disregarded their opinions and advice about asylum seekers with HIV.
Health Protection Agency figures show that three quarters of all heterosexuals diagnosed with HIV in the UK last year had come into Britain from Africa.
However, speaking this morning, Immigration Minister Beverley Hughes denied that the Government’s policy of dispersals was risking the well-being of immigrants as well as threatening public health.
But she accepted that the question about imported infection, whether from asylum seekers or other foreign nationals coming into the country, was something “we need to look at in very great detail”
“The whole issue of imported infections is one that we’ve got to face up to and examine and it may well mean some hard choices”, she told BBC Radio Four’s ‘Today’ programme.
Not ruling out the consideration of some form of compulsory medical testing, she nonetheless stressed: “Those are difficult issues. I don’t think that we should say, even before we’ve begun to understand the scale of the problem, if there is a problem, either on public health grounds or in terms of demands to the NHS, that we should say right at the outset, that’s what we’re going to do”.
