Barring HIV+ Immigrants

[Guest chendoh]

Rac, You are dangerously close, to becoming an Isolationist!

 

And, we all know what happened in 1910

[Zythryn]

No, I don't think he is. Raccoon isn't saying 'close the borders'. He is saying, don't accept immigrants who have a communicable disease.

 

Personally, I am really torn on this one. Rationally, it makes sense not to accept any immigrants who have a communicable disease that currently can't be 100% treated/cured.

Emotionally, I hate the idea of refusing aid/citizenship to someone that is need of help.

[Freddy]

I voted no because anyone with HIV can keep from infecting others. Those 10 plus million illegal aliens in the US have not been tested by US immigration for HIV.

From the link provided by Cedars:

 

Immigration

 

"Any person wishing to live in the United States for work or study purposes, or because they are joining a family member, must undergo a compulsory HIV test as part of their medical. Anyone found positive who has not obtained a special ‘medical waiver’ from US Immigration Services, will be refused entry to the country.

 

In theory, people visiting the USA on holiday could also be refused entry. If immigration officials at customs points have any reason to suspect an individual of being HIV+ (perhaps because they are carrying antiretroviral drugs, or because they look sick), they can either be forced to take an HIV test, or will be deported back to their country of origin. Many governments and HIV organisations object to this policy, which is why major international HIV conferences are very rarely held in the United States."

[InfiniteNow]

You don't get HIV by sharing a room or shaking hands with someone unfortunate enough to have tested positive. They can't sneeze on you and cause you to have HIV.

 

Let them in, and start wearing a condom. Where's the issue?

[TheBigDog]

You don't get HIV by sharing a room or shaking hands with someone unfortunate enough to have tested positive. They can't sneeze on you and cause you to have HIV.

 

Let them in, and start wearing a condom. Where's the issue?

Actually, an HIV positive person could sneeze on you and give you the disease, although the odds are very slim. The infected effluence would need to get into your system through some sort of opening, but that is hardly the issue.

 

HIV has public health risks associated with it, and has caused enormous increases in public health costs world wide. The greater the infected population the more critical these precautions become to protect the remaining members of the population from accidental infection. Do you remember when your dentist didn't wear latex gloves? Now they change gloves at the rate of dozens per day. Why? To prevent HIV. It used to be good enough for them to wash their hands, but the gloves are to protect themselves. In the emergency services area rescue breathing is not administered without a barrier. Why? To prevent HIV. In fact if no barrier is available the rescue workers are not required to perform rescue breathing lest they endanger themselves.

 

Maybe we should just have everyone wear a condom and everything will be cool. :D

 

Each time you add an infected person into the pool of people the odds of the remaining members of the population getting infected accidentally increases. HIV is a contagious disease and you either spend thousands per year to delay its effect so you can die of something else, or it kills you. Either way you lifespan is significantly shortened and your cost of living is significantly increased. The cost goes well beyond each infected individual, it extends to the whole of society as we buckle down a little tighter. For the most part these efforts have been successful, but the success of prevention and education does not mean that the danger does not exist.

 

Take an instance of say an HIV infected man who believes that having sex with a virgin will cure him (a commonly held belief in some areas of the world). Should he be allowed in a country holding that belief? Now take the disease away, should someone who is going to propagate that myth be allowed into the country? Should those who are HIV infected be forced to prove they understand the nature of their disease and the proper methods of protection and prevention? What if a person does not believe they have the disease and they will not take precautions? Should they be held out?

 

You know who I feel bad for? The people who catch HIV through blood transfusions. Arthur Ashe anyone? I remember when the CDC wanted to inform donors that they had HIV when during sample testing when they detected HIV in donated blood. Funny how certain political groups (ACLU) lobbied that it violated people's civil right to privacy to have their blood tested without their knowledge and the CDC was forbidden from informing people. Tainted blood kept flowing into the system for years thanks to that "progressive" policy.

 

Lines have to be drawn in the name of prevention. Lines of behavior and responsibility in the name of public safety. These are manifested in the form of laws. National boundaries are not arbitrary, they identify the rule of law. Dissolving the meaning of those boundaries makes the laws ineffective creating anarchy. Anarchy is not the solution to the problem of HIV or anything else.

 

It must suck to have HIV. It means that you play by different rules than the uninfected. Why? Because you have HIV and if you do the wrong things it can kill and bankrupt them!! Life is not fair, get over it.

 

Bill

[InfiniteNow]

What percentage of the total health care costs can be directly attributed to care for HIV positive immigrants in Australia and in the US?

 

Please students, show your work. I want to see how you’ve forgotten to carry a two and are off by several factors of ten, hence over representing the true scope of the matter.

 

Now, for the other readers, please ask yourself if you are willing to… based on that percentage… support yet another source of physical and ideological division among the inhabitants of our planet.

 

 

Following the cost of healthcare logic, it would be much more effective to ban smokers from immigrating than to ban HIV positive patients. There’s a healthcare cost I will acknowledge would adequately justify such a broad sweeping ban. And you’re telling me to get real… :D

 

 

 

We don't need infected people who are going to get sick and die while perhaps spreading more HIV on our taxpayers dollars

I would have to guess that Australia is looking towards the health and welfare of Australians when exploring this kind of an adjustment in their immigration policies.

The discussion is whether these people impose a health risk, as well as social drain, on the country they wish to inhabit. <…> I see the logic in denying HIV+ immigrants. From a public safety standpoint, and from a social services standpoint. <…> Raise your hand if you want to let all the HIV infected cases matriculate to your country and hometown.. and pay for all their needs and cares.

One American becoming infected via an immigrant with HIV is too many.

HIV has public health risks associated with it, and has caused enormous increases in public health costs world wide. <…> Lines have to be drawn in the name of prevention. Lines of behavior and responsibility in the name of public safety. These are manifested in the form of laws. National boundaries are not arbitrary, they identify the rule of law. <…> Life is not fair, get over it.

 

Such a policy only serves to arouse ignorant hatreds and shift the masses attention away from root causes, and, more importantly, other more salient and impactful problems.

[TheBigDog]

Now, for the other readers, please ask yourself if you are willing to… based on that percentage… support yet another source of physical and ideological division among the inhabitants of our planet.

 

Following the cost of healthcare logic, it would be much more effective to ban smokers from immigrating than to ban HIV positive patients. There’s a healthcare cost I will acknowledge would adequately justify such a broad sweeping ban. And you’re telling me to get real… :D

The percentage is not important, keeping it low is. This is not about ideological divisions. It is about physical divisions between the contagious and the healthy and where those divisions are drawn.

 

Smoking is systematically being banned in the name of health care costs. It is a slow process, but it is happening at its own pace. There is of course a difference. A person can choose to smoke or to not smoke. Once a person is infected with HIV there are few choices. I appreciate your turn of hatred from a sympathetic group (HIV) to a politically inappropriate one (smokers), but it is really just another from of intolerance and division. How dare you! :cup:

 

Bill

[Freddy]

Actually, an HIV positive person could sneeze on you and give you the disease, although the odds are very slim. The infected effluence would need to get into your system through some sort of opening, but that is hardly the issue.

Bill

I have never heard of anyone who got HIV through a cough or sneeze as this link explains.

HIV Frequently Asked Questions - Southern Nevada Health District Office of AIDS

 

HIV is not transmitted by casual contact including:

 

* Touching, talking, or sharing a home with a person who is HIV positive or has AIDS

* Sharing utensils, such as forks, knives, or spoons

* Using swimming pools, hot tubs, drinking fountains, toilet seats, tanning beds, doorknobs, gym equipment, or telephones used by people with HIV/AIDS

* Having someone with HIV/AIDS hug, kiss, sneeze, cough, breathe, sweat, or cry on you

* Being bitten by mosquitoes

* Donating blood

[TheBigDog]

I have never heard of anyone who got HIV through a cough or sneeze as this link explains.

HIV Frequently Asked Questions - Southern Nevada Health District Office of AIDS

 

HIV is not transmitted by casual contact including:

 

* Touching, talking, or sharing a home with a person who is HIV positive or has AIDS

* Sharing utensils, such as forks, knives, or spoons

* Using swimming pools, hot tubs, drinking fountains, toilet seats, tanning beds, doorknobs, gym equipment, or telephones used by people with HIV/AIDS

* Having someone with HIV/AIDS hug, kiss, sneeze, cough, breathe, sweat, or cry on you

* Being bitten by mosquitoes

* Donating blood

I appreciate the point, but it does not jibe with the training given and precautions taken in the heath care industry. If you have a cut on your arm and a person with HIV sneezed on the cut what would your reaction be? Would you not bother to get tested as a precaution?

 

Bill

[InfiniteNow]

I appreciate the point, but it does not jibe with the training given and precautions taken in the heath care industry. If you have a cut on your arm and a person with HIV sneezed on the cut what would your reaction be?

 

So, those gloves to which you’ve attributed 100% of their cost directly to HIV… they don’t also protect against Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, active viral agents and potentially harmful bacteria?

 

Exploring gray areas helps one understand the extremes of the spectrum.

[Cedars]

AEGiS-UPI: Monthly HIV treatment cost now over $2,000

 

NEW YORK - The average monthly cost of care for an American with HIV from diagnosis until death is $2,100, a new study says.

 

Once minimum wage gets to $7 an hour, an HIV infected immigrant will only have to work 2.5 full time jobs to pay for their medicine.

[InfiniteNow]

AEGiS-UPI: Monthly HIV treatment cost now over $2,000

 

NEW YORK - The average monthly cost of care for an American with HIV from diagnosis until death is $2,100, a new study says.

 

Once minimum wage gets to $7 an hour, an HIV infected immigrant will only have to work 2.5 full time jobs to pay for their medicine.

 

See opening question in Post #23. Please answer the question as it was asked.

[TheBigDog]

So, those gloves to which you’ve attributed 100% of their cost directly to HIV… they don’t also protect against Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, active viral agents and potentially harmful bacteria?

 

Exploring gray areas helps one understand the extremes of the spectrum.

You really need to learn to contain your hyperbole. Misquoting me and putting words into my mouth does not support your claims. I mentioned more than gloves, and never alluded that they were 100% of the costs.

 

Why is it that you can request numbers yet supply none of your own? I gave gloves as a single example. Yes, they protect from other things as well, but those other things are not the root of why they are required everywhere.

 

Bill

[CraigD]

Actually, an HIV positive person could sneeze on you and give you the disease, although the odds are very slim. The infected effluence would need to get into your system through some sort of opening, but that is hardly the issue.

This claim is not, to the best of my knowledge, true, either from an observed incident, or based on a theoretical understanding of HIV’s modes of transmission. Although, like most viruses, HIV is very small, so can pass from blood into a sebaceous/mucus gland cell, then into sebum/mucus, its survivial in mucus appears to be too brief to be present in sneeze or other droplet or mucous. It has been detected in breast milk, which is excreted in a manner similar to sweat, nose and throat mucus, because breast milk is a more hospitable environment for the virus. Despite at least one broad genetic assay of cultures from sweat and skin of HIV positive people, it’s never been found there.

 

TBD, if you’re aware of any literature supporting your claim, please let us know. However, even with such support, I believe your statement, even qualifying the risk of transmitting HIV from a sneeze as “very slim”, is disinformational from a public health perspective.

 

This USDHHS:CDC article states the usual official position on the subject.

 

Back to the thread’s subject, I voted “Yes [countries should bar HIV positive immigrants], except for some special circumstances”. Although HIV is far less contagious than the disease mentioned in the US policy Cedars quotes in post #8, being essentially transmittable only through sex, I believe governments are justified in concluding that an infected person poses sufficient risk to the health of the people they are tasked with protecting. IMHO, “special circumstances” would include people who could be trusted not to spread the disease, such celibates or faithful couples (Although “safe sex” practices – primarily condoms and antiviral creams – can greatly reduce the risk of HIV transmission, their risk of failure is still sufficiently high that, IMHO, governments are justified in not trusting them), and who offered great benefit to the nation, such as hard-to-find academic, professional, or artistic skills, and especially people fitting these categories seeking political asylum.

 

From a compassionate perspective, I believe wealthy nations do more good for HIV infected people in other countries by providing financial, technical, and political assistance to them to provide them with the best possible medical care, and especially to educate and provide them with the means to prevent infecting others. IMHO, next to prevention, the most important strategy for combating HIV/AIDS is for nations to assert their sovereignty and void the intellectual property status of the various effective (and very expensive) medicines and manufacture them locally, or use the threat of doing so to negotiate great reductions in price with the drugs owners.

[Cedars]

See opening question in Post #23. Please answer the question as it was asked.

 

Prove your own point yourself. I agree with the current position of the US immigration laws regarding HIV infected persons and I dont blame Australia a bit for looking into denying HIV persons entry as immigrants. 23% of new cases in Victoria Australia are a direct result of immigrants harboring the disease. 79 x 2000 (per month) puts a lot of kids into college.

 

The cost of one month of an HIV infection can insure a whole family with money left over.

 

Priorities. Best use of resources. Deny a few (hiv carriers) to help many (healthy immigrants).

[CraigD]

I appreciate the point [that HIV in not transmitted by a cough or sneeze], but it does not jibe with the training given and precautions taken in the heath care industry.

Yes, it does.

 

Healthcare workers in the US and, AFAIK most other countries, are trained in and follow a practice known as “universal precautions”. The wikipedia article “Universal precautions”, though not intended as a training document, contains accurate lists of examples of fluids requiring and not requiring precautions. Sputum and nasal secretions are among the ones that do not.

If you have a cut on your arm and a person with HIV sneezed on the cut what would your reaction be?

I would wash my arms and hands with warm soapy water, and cover the cut with an adhesive bandage (or a larger dressing if necessary). I would do the same thing if someone without HIV sneezed on me, regardless of whether I had a cut.

Would you not bother to get tested as a precaution?

I would not.

 

There are healthcare practices in addition to universal precautions intended to prevent contagion from sneezes and cough, most commonly by wearing a paper filter mask. These measures are intended to prevent the spread of more common airborn pathogens, such as flu and cold viruses, and staph bacteria.

 

In my clinical workplaces, we have a protocol of masking in the presence of HIV positive and other patients who are considered seriously immune compromised (CD4+ T-cell count < 200, vs. a normal 400 to 1600), but this practice is intended to protect them from infection from us, not us from them.

[InfiniteNow]

What percentage of the total health care costs can be directly attributed to care for HIV positive immigrants in Australia and in the US?

NEW YORK - The average monthly cost of care for an American with HIV from diagnosis until death is $2,100, a new study says.

Please answer the question as it was asked.

Prove your own point yourself. I agree with the current position of the US immigration laws regarding HIV infected persons and I dont blame Australia a bit for looking into denying HIV persons entry as immigrants. 23% of new cases in Victoria Australia are a direct result of immigrants harboring the disease. 79 x 2000 (per month) puts a lot of kids into college.

 

The cost of one month of an HIV infection can insure a whole family with money left over.

 

Priorities. Best use of resources. Deny a few (hiv carriers) to help many (healthy immigrants).

 

Here is close approximation based on what I could find online in the 20 free minutes I had today at work:

 

In 2002 the Australian government health care spending equated to 6.4% of their GDP (Source:

NCPA | Study #286, Health Care Spending: What the Future Will Look Like

).

 

Their GDP in 2002 was $413.8 B (Source:

http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/fs/aust.pdf

) . This implies that the total government health care spend in 2002 was $26.5 B.

 

Australia's estimated resident population (ERP) at June 2002 was 19.7 million (Source:

3222.0 - Population Projections, Australia, 2002 to 2101

), implying an average per capita healthcare cost of $13,500.

 

In the financial year of 2005-06, the number of permanent [immigrant] additions was 179,807 (Source:

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/pdf/Update_June06.pdf

). Over 42 million of the worlds population is living with HIV/AIDS (Source:

Until There's A Cure: Vital Statistics

), and the world population is just over 6 billion. This means that roughly 0.7% of the worlds population is HIV positive.

 

Extrapolating to Australian immigrants, 0.7% of 179,807 (the annual number of immigrants cited above), we can assume that roughly 1250 attempted immigrants are HIV positive annually. This is likely over-estimating the true number.

 

The Australian Immigration Department estimates the lifetime cost of an HIV-positive person is $240,000 to $250,000. (Source:

PM blasted over HIV comments | The Nation | The Australian

)

 

The average U.S. patient diagnosed with HIV today can expect to live 24.2 more years (Source:

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: HIV drugs extending lives by 24 years

), and we can assume it is roughly the same for Australia. Assuming 25 years post diagnosis, and a $250K lifetime cost, this $10K per year spending per HIV positive person.

 

Assuming 1250 HIV positive immigrants annually, at a cost of $10K,

this amounts to annual expenditure of $12.5 M, or

0.047% of estimated total government annual healthcare spend

and 0.003% of total annual GDP.

 

 

That’s less than 5 one-hundredths of 1% of annual healthcare spend and less than 3 one-thousandths of 1% of annual GDP.

 

 

 

So, I ask again,

Based on that percentage, [are you willing to] support yet another source of physical and ideological division among the inhabitants of our planet?