Worth of note is the fact that they are sexually deprived of the freedom to engage in sexual activities. Hence, they visit nearby mi-east countries say in the morning as sex tourists and get back to KSA i nthe evening to infect their spouses without knowing it.

I personally has close encounters of people engaging in such a risky sexual behaviour.

I condemn such promiscuity.

Here medical isolation is a legal requirement in some instances eg. for some types of tuberculosis until medication reduces the communicability, or for Sars ,and patients who don’t remain confined to their room in those circumstances will be brought back by hospital security or the police. The isolation (like a quarantine), is difficult psychologically. Where a patient is still contagious and is a repeat escapee a guard will be posted at the door. Normal medical isolation is a medical not a legal requirement of the patient, and they could sign out against medical advice.
I get the sense in the situation described the man was being held (legally, pseudo-legally, or only medically) to make sure he didn’t have one of the many communicable diseases (including tuberculosis) that immunosuppressed HIV patients get, and was released when he didn’t.

I was aware of the religious curse part but didn’t appreciate how far reaching the perception of deviant behaviour was in this context, nor how deep the stigma. Very difficult, indeed. Here the medical system contributed greatly to the reduction in stigma, by giving information about the true difficulty of contracting HIV casually, and the different modes of transmission.
Also, Canada is a generally nonreligious country, even compared with the US, where more people identify as religious, attend church more often, and there is a proliferation of protestant sects (some of the homosexuals and loose women are cursed variety). Where the US coin has “In God We Trust” we have “Elizabeth II D G Regina” but no official Church as in England, and Roman Catholicism which once dominated Quebec life is now light and liberal (my description, not the Vatican’s!).

Chiara- I would say the stigma is all about the disease and how it is associated as a “wrath from God” usually as a point to prove how peverse the west is. When you are taught this from religious leaders it is difficult to accept a person who has HIV as being nothing more than cursed from God for their peverse behavior. Even a wife will be blamed if her husband brings it home as it is something she has done to lead him astray. That is a tuff hurdle to get over.

American Bedu–I wonder if the person you know of was medically isolated until the findings could be known, rather than socially isolated for stigma reasons. Stigma continues despite increased openness (all relative of course) as you and other commenators have pointed out; however, the Saudi system for Saudis seems to have some real positives about privacy laws, work, and free medical care including medications. I still have to wonder whether the stigma has as much to do with perceived homosexuality as the illness itself and misunderstandings about communicability.

I’m also under the impression some statistics are out there. And acknowledgement however small has been growing over the years. Here is a link to an article from 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/world/middleeast/08saudi.html

I also must say that I applaud the government for requiring Saudis to have HIV testing in order to get married rather than just foriengers.

Foriegners on the other hand.. well that is a whole other bag of basmati ain’t it??

Also interesting to note that the same is said about North Korea and there statistics or lack there of of HIV/AIDS cases…. with the North Koreans refusing to even acknowledge that there would be any cases in there country…

Coincidence……