Original Name: ‘Fight AIDS, Not People with AIDS’
Author: Lulwa Shalhoud
Source: Arab News
Date of Publication: December 7th, 2007
Link: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=104375&d=7&m=12&y=2007
Student: Carolina Flores
A 46-year-old Saudi Arabian man with 2 wives and 11 children is actually suffering job discrimination as he is infected with the AIDS virus.
He used to work in an airport but he had to leave work when his friends and colleagues learnt about his disease. They started to treat them in a different way.
The standard procedure in the case a person has a viral infection is that officials verify if the person –in this case diagnosed with AIDS- is a foreigner, and he or she is deported. Accompanied by the police, he was put in an isolation room. After his citizenship was verified, he was released from custody. He was treated as if he were the most dangerous person in the world.
Actually, there are now treatments that exterminate the virus completely but the patients have to take it throughout their lifetimes so that they have normal immunity.
AIDS patients have the right to have any job as long as they can work. Otherwise, they could drift into forbidden practices like drugs or prostitution for money.
I think AIDS and HIV patients should be given the opportunity to have a job and not precisely for charity but for necessity. Let us not forget they have to support themselves and their families. It is ridiculous to keep on stigmatizing these diseases and learn more about them. We should think that perhaps is not the viruses which are killing these people, but our ridiculous prejudices.
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