• Read the Report
  • Contact Us
Menu
  • Background
    • HIV and the Law
    • Commission Overview
    • Commissioners
    • Technical Advisory Group
  • Dialogues
    • Global Dialogue 2018
      • 2018 Supplement
      • Global Dialogue 2018 Videos
    • Global Dialogue 2012
      • Video
      • Photo Gallery
      • Speeches
    • Regional Dialogues
      • Asia-Pacific Regional Dialogue
      • Caribbean
      • Eastern Europe and Central Asia
      • Latin America
      • Africa
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • High Income Countries
      • Civil Society Participation
      • Submissions to the Regional Dialogues
  • Implementation
    • Programmes
      • Being LGBTI in Asia
      • Challenging stigma and discrimination in the Caribbean
      • Improving SRHR for young key populations in Southern Africa
      • Multi-Country Western Pacific Integrated HIV/TB Project
      • Promoting a rights-based response to HIV in Africa
      • Removing legal barriers in Africa
      • South Asia Global Fund HIV Programme
      • UHC Legal Solutions Network
    • Follow Up
      • Follow Up Stories
      • Legal Environment Assessments
      • Leave No One Behind: Lessons from the Global Commission on HIV and the Law for Agenda 2030
  • Resources
    • International Guidelines on Human Rights & Drug Policy
    • eLibrary
      • Capacity Development Toolkits
      • Fact Sheets
      • Legal Environment Assessments, Reviews and Audits
      • National Dialogue Reports
      • Policy and Issue Briefs
      • Research, Discussion Papers and Reports
    • Report Resources
      • Read the Report
      • 2018 Supplement
      • Working Papers
      • Submissions
      • Presentations
      • Articles and Speeches from Commissioners
      • Selected Bibliographies
    • Regional Dialogue Resources
      • Asia-Pacific
      • Caribbean
      • Latin America
      • Eastern Europe and Central Asia
      • Africa
      • High Income Countries
  • News
    • News Articles
    • Press Releases
    • Newsletter Archives
  • Past Events
News

Ukraine lifts ban on HIV-positive visitors

By katemcqdev

05/08/2015

Ukraine lifts ban on HIV-positive visitors

Published on Wednesday, 05 August 2015 09:21
Kiev (AFP) – Ukraine said on Wednesday it had removed its restriction on entry and foreign travel for HIV-positive people as part of growing efforts to improve relations with Europe after decades of Moscow rule. The ex-Soviet state’s Deputy Health Minister Igor Pereginets said the repeal of the 14-year ban was one of the conditions put forward by the European Union in the ongoing visa-free travel talks.

“This regulation was repealed (in June) for both Ukrainian citizens travelling abroad and for foreigners entering Ukraine,” Pereginets told AFP. Kiev hopes to strike an unrestricted travel agreement with Brussels next year and apply for EU membership by 2020. Ukraine’s human rights commissioner called the health ministry’s decision “a significant step forward in our defence of human rights.”

“Ukraine now joins some 140 progressive nations that also lifted such bans,” commissioner Valeriya Lutkovska’s office said in a statement posted on Facebook. Ukraine, a nation of about 40 million people that has seen nearly 7,000 killed in a conflict that broke out 16 months ago, has one of Europe’s highest HIV infection rates.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that Ukraine had 290,000 people living with the virus in 2014. It reported a prevalence rate for adults aged 15 to 49 of 1.2 percent — the same as Ethiopia’s and higher than Democratic Republic of the Congo that year.

But UNAIDS also believes the infection rate has been slowing for most of the past decade thanks to state-sponsored awareness programmes.

The global agency has congratulated Ukraine “for being the first country in eastern Europe to reduce new HIV infections between 2001 and 2012.”  

Source: Yahoo News (AFP)

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Recent Posts

  • People living with HIV in Kyrgyzstan have won the right to adopt
  • Legal and Policy Trends Impacting People Living with HIV and Key Populations in Asia and the Pacific 2014-2019
  • UNAIDS update: COVID-19 should not be a reason to delay 2030 deadline to end AIDS as a public health threat
  • 2020 Global HIV Policy Report: Policy Barriers to HIV Progress
  • UNAIDS hails new results showing that long-acting injectable medicines are highly effective in preventing HIV among women

© 2017 [blog-link], All Rights Reserved.