Colorado doctors who care for patients
with the virus that causes AIDS hope a new federal law will help
destigmatize the disease and push immigrants to seek treatment.
Until this month, the United States banned people with HIV from
traveling into the country. Testing positive for the virus also was
grounds for denying a green card to live here permanently.
Widespread fear of deportation among Colorado's immigrant community
— mostly people from Mexico but also those from African countries — has
kept immigrants from getting treatment and even getting tested for the
virus, doctors said.
"This will improve the outcomes for immigrants with HIV here," said
Dr. Tom Campbell, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. "They're not going to
be afraid to come in and get treated."
Campbell cared for a young undocumented immigrant last summer who
had never had treatment for HIV and was admitted to the hospital with
AIDS-related pneumonia.
"He was not surprised when we told him he had HIV," said Campbell, who suspects the man had known for a while.
Avoiding detection
Immigrants with HIV who would have remained healthy on drug
treatment often avoid seeing a doctor and end up with AIDS — mainly
because they don't want any record of having the virus, worrying it
could affect their immigration status now or in the future.
AIDS activists have argued for years that including HIV on the list
of infectious diseases — among tuberculosis and syphilis — that can
preclude entry into the country was illogical. Unlike tuberculosis, the
only way to transmit HIV is through intimate contact.
"There was no medical basis for having HIV on this list in the first
place," Campbell said. "It was a political decision . . . based on
irrational fear and stigma."
International health officials have not held an AIDS conference in
the United States in two decades, since a Dutch AIDS educator with HIV
was held for several days trying to enter the United States. The last
international AIDS conference held in this country was in San Francisco
in 1990.
The lifting of the HIV ban through a change in immigration law was
pushed by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, and signed into law by President
Barack Obama last fall. It took effect this month.
Clinic gathering clients
About 10 percent of the 1,400 patients at the university's
infectious diseases division and Colorado Center for AIDS Research are
immigrants, and the university recently opened a new HIV clinic just
for immigrants. It has 14 patients so far — two-thirds are from Mexico
and came to the U.S. for work, while the rest are from Africa, said Dr.
Jose Castillo, a university physician who runs the clinic.
A 60-year-old woman from Ethiopia who believes she contracted the
virus at a dental clinic back home is among Castillo's patients.
Martha, who doesn't want her full name used because of the stigma
associated with HIV, came to Denver in 2007 to help care for her
grandchildren.
She said she didn't know she was HIV positive when she filled out
her visa paperwork to visit the U.S. After about four months in
Colorado, Martha applied for a green card and had to take a blood test.
When she found out she had HIV, she and her daughter feared immigration
officials would ship the whole family back to Ethiopia.
"I said, 'Oh, my God!' " recalled her daughter, Lydia, who also did
not want her full name published. "Where were they going to send us? I
was worried too much."
After two years, including home visits by immigration officials,
Martha was granted a waiver and received a green card despite her HIV
status. She takes one pill each day and feels healthy, she said.
