HIV positive people often live in insecure social conditions. More than a quarter of people living with HIV/Aids have a recognised disability granting them benefits, most often the AAH (Allocation aux adultes handicapés - Disabled Adults Allowance), which amounts to 610,28 euros per person per month. With this meagre amount, which places HIV-positive people under the poverty line, the first priority is food and lodging. Health care becomes a secondary concern.
43% of HIV-positive people of working age have no professional activity. Their living conditions are especially rough: 47% of them have less than 760 euros per person per month to live, and 22% don’t have their own place . The resources of unemployed HIV-positive people do not grant them access to public housing.
More than two thirds of people who lost their job since they discovered their disease want to work again. Despite this strong motivation, HIV-positive people are confronted with specific obstacles when it comes to professional integration and/or keeping one’s job. HIV positivity remains a significant discrimination motive in the workplace. Moreover, the impacts of the disease on professional life, in particular fatigability and having to deal with the side effects of treatments, which ask for some adjustments in the workplace, are still insufficiently taken into account.
Such a social vulnerability doesn’t make it possible to be well taken into account. Professional integration and/or keeping one’s job with a good consideration of the disease’s hardships, as well as benefiting from the fundamental right to lodging, are essential requisites to fight the disease with dignity. While HIV positivity itself aggravates isolation, insecurity and ostracism, keeping social relations through work and adequate resources is also a matter of social cohesion.
Demands :
- To put the AAH on par with the SMIC.
- To give priority access to public housing to households with someone who is affected by a disease listed on the French ALD (long term conditions) list.
- Extend the 1987 law requiring the employment of disabled people to persons affected by a long term condition.
