Health – Hannover – Aidshilfe: Discrimination against HIV-positive people in medicine – Health
Hanover (dpa / lni) – The Aidshilfe Niedersachsen (AHN) criticizes the discrimination against HIV-positive people in medicine. People infected with the virus are still wrongly viewed as a danger, said AHN Managing Director Christin Engelbrecht. Aidshilfe Niedersachsen is celebrating its 35th anniversary on Thursday with a reception in the Künstlerhaus in Hanover, to which Social Affairs Minister Daniela Behrens (SPD) and former Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth (CDU) were also expected.
Although there is now a medical consensus that people infected with the HI virus are not contagious if they are properly medicated, these people are still discriminated against, especially in medicine. Because of the alleged risk of infection, some medical students were subject to high requirements that would make studying almost impossible, said Engelbrecht. The medical consensus means that “first of all, there is no longer any reason for discrimination”.
The AHN represents the interests of HIV-infected people. One of the most important milestones in Lower Saxony was a successful lawsuit in 2019 that supported the Aidshilfe. At that time, an applicant was rejected by the police because of his infection – wrongly, as the administrative court in Hanover ruled.
According to estimates by the Robert Koch Institute, there were 3,810 people living with HIV in Lower Saxony in 2020, 90 fewer than a year earlier. Of these, 2910 were men. This emerges from documents published in November. According to the estimate, 130 of the total cases were new infections, 20 fewer than a year earlier. As in 2019, there were around 40 deaths among those infected in 2020.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220519-99-347687/2