A decree that will soon be published will allow adults living with HIV to integrate the armed forces, the gendarmerie and the military corps of firefighters.
- Adults living with HIV will soon be able to work as military police and firefighters.
- A decree ending the exclusion from hiring HIV-positive people will be “published in the coming days”.
- Recent studies have shown that patients receiving antiretroviral treatment have an undetectable viral load and do not transmit HIV.
At the end of November, hiring discrimination targeting people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) had been lifted for the police. The government had abolished the application of “Sigycop”. This is a physical fitness assessment device used in several public service professions. The latter classifies HIV-positive patients as unfit. Until now, the Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, has always refused to modify this device.
HIV: a decree reviewing “all the criteria of aptitude”
But, on May 8, he announced that he had “Issued a decree which will review all the criteria of aptitude to enter the armed forces”. Clearly, adults living with HIV will now have the opportunity to integrate the “gendarmerie, the firefighters of Paris and Marseille, and all the armed forces”, declared the Minister for the Armed Forces, who was invited to the program “Four truths” of France 2. This order, resulting from a request from Gérald Darmanin, will be “published in the coming days”.
Ensure “that having HIV is not a discriminating criterion” thanks to therapeutic protocols
As a reminder, the law of 1980, which established the need to fulfill certain “conditions of physical aptitude”, did not allow people living with HIV to exercise the profession of gendarme and military firefighter.
“It was not necessarily discriminatory, the army health service sometimes had some fears for our soldiers who served in external operations. They did a remarkable job with the associations and in particular AIDES thanks to which they developed the therapeutic protocols which now allow us to ensure that having HIV is not a discriminating criterion for entering the armed forces and that is a good thing”he explained Sébastien Lecornu.
For several years, scientific studies have shown that HIV-positive people receiving antiretroviral treatment have an undetectable viral load and do not transmit the immunodeficiency virus.
