The legal and human rights basis of HIV positive undocumented African migrants’ access to healthcare services in the UK and US: a non-governmental organization based study

This thesis established the relationship between actual practices, law and human rights in HIV positive undocumented African migrants’ quest to gain health related services in the United Kingdom and the United States. The thesis establishes this through an examination of extant law and literature and an empirical exploration of actual practices. The empirical component of the thesis is based methodologically upon the Grounded Theory Method. Data was collected from various Non-Governmental Organizations within each of the respective countries. The arguments and conclusions of the thesis hinge on the interaction between laws that facilitate or prevent access to health services under humanitarian grounds in the respective nations. The major theoretical concern identified in the study centers upon the moment at which the individual migrant loses their legal status. In the case of the UK, this generally occurs after the application and appeal for asylum have failed. In the US, the majority of persons experience this loss of legal status far earlier, since few Africans enter the country incident to asylum applications. The results of the thesis considerable inconsistencies in the implementation of law in the case of both countries, and establishes the governmental and nongovernmental factors that influence the provision of such services. While services continue to be available in life threatening circumstances, there is currently no legally mandated point prior to this that care is mandated. Thus, the initially degradation of health in the case of people living with HIV/AIDS is inevitable. The domestic laws of the UK and US are equivalent in that both guarantee care only in cases where life is acutely threatened. The functional aspects of the two systems are significantly different. In the case of the US, there are few programs that offer government funded care to even legal citizens, thus care for even legal migrants is difficult to obtain. The UK conversely is characterized by near universal access to general practitioners with patchy access to consultants who provide HIV related care. In the cases of both countries, there is a likelihood that an individual may receive HIV related care and later be denied care resulting in the eventual deterioration of there health. The thesis concludes that there is need for reconsideration of the current approach to law in both the UK and US, given existing international human iv rights declarations. In the context of HIV/AIDS, this is particularly profound given the chronic nature of the disease, its amenability to treatment, and the inevitability of death in cases where treatment is withheld.