Science has made leaps and bounds on HIV, but health systems, legislation and perceptions have remained in the past

 

Statement by AKEL MP Giorgos Koukoumas after the meeting of the Parliamentary Human Rights and Equal Opportunities for Men and Women Committee

4 April 2022

We discussed today in the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, following a proposal submitted by the MP’s of AKEL and the Ecologists, the need to defend the rights of HIV-positive people. On this occasion, it needs to be heard once again that science has made huge leaps in recent years in the field of HIV.

Science has spoken and spoken irrevocably that HIV cannot be transmitted by any kind of social interaction.

Science has also been able to guarantee that when a person with HIV follows antiretroviral treatment and care they do not transmit the virus.

Science has also succeeded in ensuring a normal life expectancy and a comparable quality of life for HIV-positive people, and worldwide infections have been drastically reduced.

For this reason, it is extremely unfortunate that while on the one hand science is making leaps and bounds, on the other hand health systems are lagging far behind. State laws and practices remain stuck in the past. Social perceptions are still based on inhumane prejudices against HIV-positive people, which are not based on the data and achievements of science.

Today during the debate we have set specific priorities.

1. First and foremost is the issue of staffing the Gregoriou Clinic. Today, instead of having at least two doctors, the Gregoriou Clinic has only one doctor, who is due to retire in a few months. It is absolutely urgent to ensure that the clinic’s medical and nursing staff have access to anti-retroviral and pharmaceutical treatment and to safeguard that it is administered by hospitals throughout Cyprus and not just by the Larnaca hospital.
2. It is also necessary to re-assess all the legislation passed and decrees issued by the Republic of Cyprus which, due to anachronistic provisions, victimize HIV-positive people, with discrimination in employment and education. It is inconceivable for the Cypriot state to remain with the concepts of the 1980s with regards HIV.
3. The need to review the EUR 300 allowance given to HIV-positive people as an incentive to continue their antiretroviral treatment is also a priority issue. This allowance is evidently insufficient to meet the socio-economic needs of people who are experiencing, not the consequences of the virus, but the consequences of the prejudices surrounding the virus, which leave people unemployed, socially marginalised and destitute.