Human Rights Watch reported last week that roughly one third of the world's countries turn away migrant workers, students, and other travelers with HIV, even when their conditions are under control with the use of drugs. In some cases, the countries admit them but then either deport or hold them without offering proper treatment.

People from poor countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka face the greatest discrimination, and are often tested for HIV without their knowledge by the wealthier countries they move to, such as Saudi Arabia and Great Britain. They are frequently denied medical attention or deported and not paid back wages from jobs they held while working in their adopted countries.

But it's not just people from third-world countries who face such discrimination. One study tracked HIV-positive Britons who were traveling to the United States, and found that they sometimes stopped taking their medication or tried to send them ahead for fear of being searched at customs, learned to be infected, and denied entry into the US.

The report also indicates that people with HIV are often deported to countries where they will not receive the proper medical care, and are sometimes held in prisons without treatment for their illness.

Travel bans on people with HIV are nothing new, but this report indicates that the problem may be worse than previously thought: if sick people are denied treatment or sent to countries where they will not receive proper attention, the countries that are deporting people with HIV are complicit in their illnesses getting out of hand.

[Image: Map of people living with AIDS, UN AIDS Report, 2008]