Speaking Up

A while ago, I was talking about finding out that there's countries that won't knowingly admit someone who is HIV infected. Now I'm being presented with the interesting challenge that in a few months, my work might want to send me to countries that are listed as having a policy of refusing people at the border if they either disclose their HIV status or are found carrying HIV medication on them.

I don't really know how to handle this. A similar project came up in a country where there are no issues with HIV at the border, but I was passed over for this assignment on the grounds that they need me in London at the moment because I know the job better than other people. I'm not sure I entirely believe that but they've promised that the next major international job goes to me. At the very least, it means lying on my visa application. If, however, the acupuncture doesn't pay off and I'm on the wrong side of the CD4 Poverty Line when I go to test next, then there's the possibility I either have to attempt to smuggle medication in with me, arrange a drop-off from a sympathetic local HIV charity like they do in America or go without medication when I'm immune compromised and entering a country I've not been to before, so for which I wouldn't have an acquired immune response anyway.

Hopefully, though, I'll be healthy enough in the numbers game to avoid that being a problem and I won't be faced with the tricky scenario of making a decision between not disclosing and risking deportation or disclosing to my employers and risking losing the international projects and perhaps my job completely. I have an online friend who recently came out to his employers about why he was suffering from seemingly chronic fatigue. Within a day he had a letter on his desk telling him that they were restructuring the department and didn't need him any more, despite taking new staff on two days later to do a similar job and no-one else losing their jobs.

It stinks that we even have to think about these things. Isn't it enough that we have to deal with living with this infection?