Sixty-nine thousand Ukrainians can now celebrate a victory. A court in Poltava oblast has reinstated in his job an HIV-positive resident of Novi Sanzhary, who was fired because of his health. According to korrespondent.net, the court ruled to reinstate Oleksiy Voloshyn in his driver’s job at the newspaper Zlahoda and ordered his employers to pay him $740 in compensation for moral damages. This is welcome news for AIDS patients and HIV-positive individuals, who number 69,000 in Ukraine, according to official statistics. This December Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Commissioner Nina Karpachova will present a special 200-page report dealing with how Ukrainians treat their HIV-positive compatriots and respect their rights. Tellingly, according to an opinion poll conducted last April by the AIDS Fund East-West, 50% of respondents believe that HIV carriers must be isolated from society. Most respondents in Kyiv and Simferopol (the survey covered Odesa, Mykolayiv, Kyiv, and Simferopol) said that they would treat HIV-positive individuals with the utmost politeness, but would avoid contact with them. As a rule, fear and pity dominate among the emotions that Ukrainians feel for individuals living with HIV. Only respondents in Odesa believe that an HIV-positive person should be treated like a healthy one, with nearly 80% of those polled answering in the affirmative.
Real-life stories confirm this general attitude of estrangement. Nearly every HIV-positive individual at the charitable organization All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV has experienced what they call “signs of discrimination and stigmatization.” As a rule, doctors and nurses top the list of offenders. “As soon as I told them about my status,” says Maryna, who is HIV-positive, “they immediately came up with a dozen excuses why I couldn’t receive treatment at that medical institution, for example: ‘There are specialized clinics for AIDS patients, while the doctors here have no time or drugs’.” The attitude of medical personnel toward HIV-positive individuals in smaller urban areas is even worse, needless to say. If the stories recounted by the staff of the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV are anything to go by, in small towns HIV-positive people are still treated as though they were lepers.
Maryna says that very often doctors forget the key principle of their professional ethics, i.e., the privileged nature of the diagnosis, even though the law states explicitly “the state guarantees HIV- positive individuals accessibility, excellence, and effectiveness of medical exams, including anonymous testing.” The law also says that HIV-positive individuals are not obliged to inform medical personnel about their status. However, doctors claim that the latter provision discriminates against them. According to Professor Vitaly Tsymbaliuk, corresponding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences, it is very easy for a surgeon to become infected with HIV during an operation.
In any case, HIV-positive individuals have yet to win court cases against doctors in Ukraine. A Kyiv court is slated to hear the case of a 36-year-old woman, who is suing her doctor for revealing her HIV status. The All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV is aware of two successful cases involving HIV- positive individuals: a 1998 lawsuit filed by a tractor driver from Kirovohrad oblast, who was infected with HIV in a hospital, and the case of Oleksiy Voloshyn mentioned above. According to Tetiana Deshko, an advocacy expert with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine, at one point it seemed that the trial would be delayed and the hearings adjourned for as long as possible, but the professionalism shown by the lawyers of the All- Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV won the day.
Dismissals from work because of HIV-positive diagnoses are commonplace. Sometimes the administrations of kindergartens or schools refusing to admit children of infected parents do not conceal the reason behind their decision. Recently, the Labor Ministry signed an agreement with the World Labor Organization about a joint project that obliges Ukrainian officials to monitor the way the rights of HIV-positive individuals are respected in their work environment. There are also plans to introduce anti-discrimination clauses into Ukraine’s labor legislation. For example, in cases where an employer refuses to hire an HIV-positive individual because of his diagnosis, the latter would be able to file a lawsuit within a month’s time. There are also plans to officially outlaw dismissals of HIV-positive employees. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Labor Code has yet to be passed, which means that its progressive clauses are still not being implemented.
Experts attribute Ukrainians’ biased attitude toward HIV-positive individuals to lack of knowledge about this disease. For example, in the same poll 80% of women agreed that it is unacceptable to buy food products from an infected person. HIV-positive individuals also shouldn’t be allowed to work as schoolteachers, according to respondents. All things considered, the lack of knowledge about how the virus is transmitted is not surprising, despite the fact that the number of organizations working to prevent HIV/AIDS is growing every year, with most of them working to eradicate ignorance about AIDS.
Nevertheless, experts have registered some progress. As The Day learned from Alla Shcherbynska, director of the Ukrainian Center for AIDS Prevention, people are increasingly realizing that HIV is not transmitted through air and that a positive diagnosis does not mean immediate death. In her opinion, the production of anti-retroviral drugs, which will be launched in the near future, will make these drugs more affordable. This will enable HIV-positive individuals to remain full-fledged and active members of society. Meanwhile, of the 4,000 individuals in need of urgent treatment, only a mere 1,000 can afford it.
