Peace Corps Bosses Screw Up

The Washington Post has an editorial in Tuesday's edition describing the case of a volunteer who tested negative for HIV on recruitment, but who tested positive half way through his assignment to the Ukraine. The Peace Corps pulled him out of country, citing Ukrainian policy that does not allow foreigners with HIV in country, retested him in Washington, and then fired him. He has filed a lawsuit which challenged the volunteer's "termination as a violation of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act because it 'appears based upon a Peace Corps policy to terminate volunteers who are HIV positive without an individualized assessment as to whether they are able to serve with reasonable accommodation'"

As a former Peace Corps Volunteer, I find this story especially annoying. I have known several people who were shifted to a new site in a new country to complete a tour of duty when it became impossible to do so in their original site. The Peace Corps could have been able to do so in this case as well.

The Post does not explain the situation? I will assume that the medical tests were accurate, but it is possible for someone to have been so recently infected before a test that they show negative on the test. On the other hand, the volunteer is more likely to have been infected during his term of duty. While it is likely that the infection was not acquired as a result of the volunteers duties, it is possible that (for example) he was infected in the course of treatment for an injury he sustained at work. In this latter case, I would expect the U.S.Government to pick up his HIV related medical expenses for the rest of his life.

Certainly the Government should not discriminate against an employee on the basis of a health problem (which does not incapacitate him from performing regular duties). Even more certainly, the Government should not do so in a foreign policy setting where the discrimination would set a bad example and diminish the prestige of the United States.