You are HIV positive and require specific medications known as anti-retroviral medication as part of your medical treatment. For the medication to be effective, you need to take it every day. You were recently incarcerated at a provincial correctional centre and, since then, you have not been able to access your medication consistently. When you were first incarcerated, your personal supply of anti-retroviral medication was confiscated. You were not able to see a doctor for a new prescription for some time and so you missed two weeks of your daily required medication. After this, you continued to experience weekly and then monthly interruptions in your access to your required medication. These interruptions last days at a time. You learn that other HIV positive people in the correctional facility are also experiencing the same kind of delays. When you mention wanting to complain about this unfair treatment to other inmates and guards, they warn you that filing a complaint will put you at risk for retaliation from staff including a potential negative change in your security status. You worry that complaining might also risk decreasing your already fragile access to your required medication because you rely completely on the correctional facility to provide your health care.
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Yes, you are experiencing discrimination based on your HIV status which is considered a physical disability under B.C.’s Human Rights Code. Under the Code, provincial correctional centres are considered services and have obligations not to discriminate against incarcerated people. The correctional centre is failing to provide the health care you need to manage your disability. This is not just an issue affecting you but seems to affect many of these other incarcerated people who have HIV and rely completely on the correctional facility for their health care. This discrimination is called systemic discrimination. You can learn more about systemic discrimination.
The Code also protects people who make human rights complaints from retaliation. That means that it is illegal to punish someone for making a human rights complaint. Examples of retaliation include changing an incarcerated person’s security status or withholding medical treatment as punishment for filing a human rights complaint.
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