Immigrant women are becoming some of the main victims of new HIV transmissions in several European countries, especially in France, according to official figures.
The French Institute for Health Surveillance (InVS, after its French name) said in a report published this week that 6 700 people were diagnosed with HIV in France last year. This included a substantial number of women from sub-Saharan countries.
According to the report by InVS, 57% of the new HIV cases are women, and among those, 48% are immigrants from sub-Saharan countries.
The paper says that among men, roughly 20% of HIV infections reported in 2005 affected sub-Saharan African immigrants. “But the number of HIV infections among sub-Saharan African women reported in 2005 represents roughly double of the cases detected among sub-Saharan African men in the same period.”
A third of all new HIV infections detected in France in 2005 affect an immigrant from sub-Saharan Africa.
The Berlin-based Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) for health research and surveillance of contagious diseases says in another report that “most of the new cases [of new HIV infections] in Western Europe were caused by heterosexual transmissions among immigrants from sub-Saharan African countries”.
Both the RKI and InVS warn that HIV infections are again on the rise in Europe. “In 2005, 77 553 newly diagnosed cases of HIV infection [104 cases per million population] were reported from 48 of the 52 countries in the European region of the World Health Organisation,” InVS said. In all, 8 346 cases of Aids were diagnosed (12 cases per million) in 47 countries last year.
“In comparison to previous years, the number of newly diagnosed cases of HIV infection reported [in Europe] in 2005 has continued to increase, and the number of diagnosed Aids cases continued to decline,” the InVS report added.
Trend reversed
The number of new HIV infections for the whole of Europe reached a peak of almost 114 000 cases in 2001, to fall over the next two years. But the falling trend was reversed in 2004.
For the RKI, “the most worrisome aspect of this trend is the particular vulnerability of immigrants, the renewed rise of HIV infections among homosexual and bisexual men, the growing weakness of the state’s efforts against the disease, and the diminishing effect of the prevention campaigns.”
The RKI estimates that today about 700 000 people are infected with HIV in Western Europe. It estimates there will be about 22 000 new cases this year, 2 600 of them in Germany.
Willi Rozenbaum, director of the French National Council on Aids (CNS), says a first step to take against the disease is a radical improving of screening. The CNS estimates that up to 130 000 persons are infected with HIV in France, but almost half among them ignore the infection and consequently have no access to treatment.
“More than 35% of the people infected start treatment when the infection has already developed into Aids, or even when their immunity has been radically weakened by the disease,” Rozenbaum said.
In addition, he said, “if you know that you are infected with HIV, you are more likely to change your sexual behaviour towards safer practices”.
Rozenbaum urged “all homosexual men and all immigrants from sub-Saharan African countries” to take HIV screening. “We also have to extend the screening to all patients suffering from hepatitis and to all attentions centres for drugs users in France.”
Emmanuel Chateau, president of Act Up, an activist group supporting the rights of people infected with HIV, condemned the French government’s proposed move to deprive some HIV-infected immigrants of access to treatment, based on the “theoretical possibility that they might enjoy treatment in their countries of origin”.
The Interior Ministry is preparing to provide for expulsion of HIV-infected immigrants to their countries of origin.
“All international experts on public health agree that theoretical access to treatment against Aids [in sub-Saharan African countries] is not a guarantee for the majority of the population, especially the poor, to actually benefit from these treatments,” Chateau said.
“The government’s directive would represent a renouncement of what has been seen as a humanitarian gesture towards ill immigrants, and their expulsion to their countries of origin a ruling that can mean death due to the lack of appropriate treatment,” he said.
In an open letter addressed to French President Jacques Chirac, Chateau and other representatives of NGOs urged the government to abandon such a move, and to “reassert France’s engagements towards the rights of ill people, regardless of their nationalities”. — IPS