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Should HIV get you kicked out of the Peace Corps?

Wed, 05/07/2008 - 2:41pm

In December 2006, Jeremiah S. Johnson, 25, began serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Rozdilna, Ukraine, a town near the border with Moldova. When he started, he was HIV negative. In January of this year, he had a midservice medical exam in Kiev and agreed to an HIV test. It came back positive. The Peace Corps told him to pack his bags and return to the United States.

Johnson says the Peace Corps director for Ukraine told him he had to go home because Ukraine doesn't allow HIV-positive foreigners to work there. (If so, this isn't unique. As blogger Andrew Sullivan has pointed out repeatedly, the United States has its own fair share of restrictions on HIV-positive immigrants and tourists.)

Back in Washington, Johnson had an end-of-service medical exam and received written notification that he was being "medically separated" from the Peace Corps. He contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the organization sent a demand letter to the Peace Corps saying that it is violating the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. (The State Department, by the way, changed its policies just this February to permit HIV-positive Americans, on a case-by-case basis, to work in the Foreign Service.)

Johnson doesn't have any physical symptoms of HIV. He and the ACLU say the Peace Corps did not assess him to determine if he could continue serving with reasonable accommodations. Additionally, his requests to be assigned to another country were denied.

What do you all think? A few questions come to mind:

  • How easy would it be for Johnson to receive medical monitoring of his condition in a poor country (granted, the medical infrastructure in some Peace Corps countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, is probably stronger than in, say, Burkina Faso and Guinea)?
  • What if living in an underdeveloped country aggravated his condition -- would there be liability issues?
  • Does how he contracted HIV -- for example, if he was injecting recreational drugs -- make a difference (the manner in which he became HIV positive hasn't been disclosed)?

For more on controversies about the Peace Corps, check out "Think Again: Peace Corps" and some of the reactions the piece prompted.

 

 

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Depends on how he contracted it and what his job was

by pragzz on Fri, 05/09/2008 - 1:06am

Sadly this is not a unique story. I was talking to a couple of PC volunteers who had spent their assignments running HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. They estimate that 15% of PC volunteers contract HIV every year during their tour of duty, usually from unprotected sex, and in a few cases from drug use. Both guys I talked to agreed that all these cases needed to be sent back home.

The part that infuriates them (and me) is that these are educated adults, often from families with means. All have been put through extensive counseling before they are sent out to their assignments. Many of them work on HIV programs themselves. How can they or their colleagues go about preaching what is not being practiced in their own ranks?? It is embarrassing, and they are terrible examples. Worse, if they were stupid enough to contract it, they are likely stupid enough to go spreading it to other people. Finally, the PC is responsible for medical expenses. Its not fair that an agency already strained in its budget should be forced to take responsibility for a person's willful stupidity.

Bottom Line: This can be argued many ways, but unless the guy got HIV through a blood transfusion or through other means he had no control over, I'm with the PC policy on this one.