BANGKOK (AlertNet) Â? Suksma does not know when exactly her husband, a former injecting drug user, infected her with the HIV virus but she could remember vividly the day she was diagnosed.
"I've been living with HIV since 15 May 2006," said the 35-year-old softly-spoken Indonesian, a member of the Indonesia Positive Women's Network.
"That was the day I first counted myself as a HIV positive person."
Now widowed with a young daughter who is HIV negative, Suksma currently lives and works in Malaysia which imposes restrictions on people living with HIV.
As a professional, Suksma does not need to go for mandatory HIV testing before entering the country like low-skilled immigrants but she is aware she can be deported as soon as the government finds out about her status.
This also means she cannot access health services in Malaysia as a visit to the hospital usually results in a blood test, whether it is necessary or not, Suksma said.
"So what I do in these two years (in Malaysia), if I have to access medications I have to go back to Indonesia, my own country, or I do it while I'm having a meeting or training in Bangkok, Thailand," Suksma said.
"It costs a lot more."
Malaysia is not alone in having such regulations. According to the United Nation's agency for HIV/AIDS UNAIDS, more than a quarter of the world's countries, territories and areas still deny HIV positive people entry, stay or residence as a result of their HIV status .
This includes first world countries such as Singapore, which denies visas for even short term stays, Australia and New Zealand.
The United States lifted a 22-year-old ban on HIV-positive visitors to the country only in January.
OBSOLETE AND OUTDATED
On Sunday, UNAIDS, together with parliamentarians from 150 countries who are attending an annual meeting held in Bangkok and activists such as Suksma, called for the lifting of these restrictions.
Michele Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS, called the laws "outdated" and "obsolete" and based on ignorance than fact.
"It is not acceptable when the world is calling for normalising the fight against HIV/AIDS that the people who are most marginalised in this world today, who are most at-risk are facing universal obstacles," Sidibé said.
"What need are protective laws, not punitive laws. We are calling for equal freedom of movement for people living with HIV."
About 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with HIV and the AIDS virus. Since AIDS emerged in the 1980s, almost 60 million people have been infected and 25 million have died.
While significant gains have been made since HIV was discovered, changing people's attitude and ignorance remains a challenge, according to AIDS activists.
For Suksma, travel restrictions on people living with HIV like herself are discriminatory.
"Every single person in this earth has the right to move and stay. Banning people with HIV such as me from entering certain countries is certainly a violation of basic human rights," she said.
She said countries who have such regulations should realise they do not protect their national public health because "whether they realise it or not, every country in the world now has HIV epidemic already, whether it's huge or small."
Such policies stigmatise people living with HIV unfairly, she said, by implying foreign immigrants are the only ones carrying the virus and are responsible for spreading it.
The campaign has just begun, but both Sidibé and Suksma are quietly confident of a positive outcome.
"HIV is not socially contagious and there are ways to prevent transmission," Suksma said. "If we have enough understanding about HIV transmission, I do believe people will reconsider this HIV-related travel ban."
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
