As the XVII International AIDS Conference wraps up in Mexico City
today, IOM's Deputy Director General Ndioro Ndiaye has appealed to
governments to include migrants in their HIV/AIDS programming and
responses.

She highlighted the increased vulnerability of migrants to HIV
infection to journalists attending the conference.

Her comments came as a study on various migrant communities
carried out by IOM and the Italian Ministry for Labour, Health and
Social Policies and presented at the conference,  found that
single male migrants newly arriving in Italy with little knowledge
of Italian and a low level of education, were most at risk of
contracting HIV.

Lack of awareness and high-risk behaviour is largely behind the
findings of the study which also identified other at-risk groups
including young, second-generation immigrants struggling to
integrate.

The study was carried out when it was discovered that 70 per
cent of the people in Italy who realize they are HIV positive only
when diagnosed with AIDS, are immigrants.

Addressing HIV-related travel restrictions implemented in nearly
70 countries around the world, IOM's HIV focal point, Dr. Islene
Araujo said it was time to revise national migration laws on the
issue. "These restrictions were created in the 1980's when the AIDS
epidemic was not well understood. Today, there is no public health
evidence that supports these restrictions."

IOM, which is part of an international task force on HIV-related
travel restrictions, engages in constructive dialogue with
governments who maintain such restrictions to find more effective
ways to address the relationship between migration and HIV.

"Travel restrictions marginalize HIV positive migrants even more
by pushing this population further underground and away from
life-saving treatment, care and support," says IOM's Director of
Health, Dr. Davide Mosca.

During the conference which began last weekend, IOM, ILO and
UNAIDS presented a joint policy brief on HIV and international
labour migration focusing on HIV-related rights and needs of
international labour migrants irrespective of their legal status
and whether their stay in the destination country is short or long
term.

The policy brief recommends specific actions to be carried out
by each actor in the migration process in order to effectively
address the HIV-related risks encountered by mobile populations,
including poverty, gender inequality and human rights
violations.

For further information, please contact:

Jorge Gallo

Tel. +57.311.561.9495

E-mail: "mailto:jgallo@iom.int" target="_blank" title=
"">jgallo@iom.int