ShareThisBy LISA PRIEST and MARINA JIMENEZ
Toronto Globe and Mail
Monday, May 14, 2007
A Kenyan woman who came to Canada in search of a better life, only to become infected with the AIDS virus in a sexual assault by a Canadian man, faces possible deportation for being a burden on the health-care system.
The 29-year-old, who cannot be named due to a court-ordered publication ban, was infected more than five years ago by Adrien Sylver Nduwayo, who is now serving the toughest prison sentence in Canada -- 15 years -- for intentionally infecting others with HIV.
In the process, the Vancouver, British Columbia-area nurse and mother of two has become a victim not only of Nduwayo's crime, but of the immigration system. That's because some HIV immigrants with significant health needs, such as requiring many months of costly antiretroviral therapy, can be deemed a burden on the health-care system.
This victim of crime could face a one-way trip back to Kenya, where access to antiretroviral medication is uncertain.
"It's just not right," the woman said. "It was a deliberate spread, it was very devastating. It still upsets me to think about it."
But had she been a refugee as Nduwayo once was, she would have access to the best the Canadian health-care system has to offer. By the late 1990s, he had become a Canadian citizen.
Individuals seeking permanent residence in Canada who are assessed as likely to pose an excessive demand on Canadian health and social services -- determined as costing $18,200 or more in health and social services over a five-year period -- are considered inadmissible on health grounds, according to Melanie Carkner, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
In fact, in sentencing Nduwayo, Justice John Truscott of the British Columbia Supreme Court noted that the Kenyan woman "is not allowed to emigrate to Canada as a skilled worker, and may not be allowed to stay in the country the next time she has to apply for a work permit. Even if she can remain in the country, she may not be able to continue working as a nurse."
The woman knows she is in legal jeopardy. "I don't know what the decision is going to be for my immigration," she confirmed in a telephone interview. "... I went to see two lawyers who said: 'There is no way you would be allowed to immigrate.' "
With her dreams of traveling the world as a nurse gone, her day-to-day struggle is focused on survival. There are weekly doctor appointments, tests for liver and pancreas function and drugs to keep the disease -- which would otherwise kill her -- at bay.
At one point, her CD4 count was as low as 190; in a recent interview she said it was up to 260. CD4 cells are an important type of white blood cell and are part of the body's defense against infection. HIV attacks CD4 cells and uses them to make more copies of HIV. In doing so, the CD4 cell becomes unable to do its job of protecting the body. Though a normal count in a healthy, HIV-negative adult can vary, it usually hovers between 600 and 1,200 CD4 cells per cubic millimeter of blood.
It is cruelly paradoxical, given that she emigrated disease-free from Kenya, where AIDS is endemic.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
