AI Chat Search Browse Media On This Day Map Quotations Timeline Research Free Datasets Remembered About Contact
☶ Go up a page

Korea Plans Stern Anti-A.I.D.S. Laws (Press, 7 March 1987)

This is a Generative AI summary of this newspaper article. It may contain errors or omissions. Please note that the language in the summary is reflective of the original article and the societal attitudes of the time in which it was written.

Summary: Korea Plans Stern Anti-A.I.D.S. Laws (Press, 7 March 1987)

South Korea is taking proactive measures to combat the potential spread of A.I.D.S. as it prepares to host the 1988 Olympic Games. In an announcement made on 7 March 1987, Health Ministry officials revealed plans to introduce stringent anti-A.I.D.S. legislation aimed at safeguarding the thousands of tourists expected for the event. To facilitate this, the government will form an inter-Ministerial committee tasked with studying various strategies to fight A.I.D.S., and one of the measures under consideration includes a ban on foreign entertainers known to carry the virus. The proposed legislation, which will be presented to Parliament later in the year, will grant the government the authority to expel foreign individuals diagnosed with A.I.D.S. from South Korea. It will also require women working in catering and entertainment in major cities like Seoul to undergo A.I.D.S. antibody tests. Regular testing is already conducted in areas near United States military bases and in homosexual bars across the country, where approximately 40,000 U.S. servicemen are stationed. Concerns surrounding the disease have been heightened by past cases, including two Americans—a soldier and a professor—who returned to the U.S. after being diagnosed with A.I.D.S., believed to have contracted it prior to arriving in South Korea. Furthermore, in February 1987, South Korea recorded its first death linked to A.I.D.S. The 62-year-old man, who had tested positive for the virus, succumbed to a viral infection affecting his cerebral nervous system. The government is also initiating mandatory reporting by doctors of known A.I.D.S. carriers to state health centres and allowing local authorities to carry out medical checks on those suspected of being infected. Additionally, the Ministry of Health announced plans to test around 800,000 blood donors throughout the year for A.I.D.S., reflecting an increasing urgency to identify and mitigate risks. To support these initiatives, the South Korean government is expected to allocate a supplementary budget of approximately USD 3.5 million, also intending to import AED testing equipment worth around USD 400,000. While officials have stated that there are no confirmed cases of A.I.D.S. within the country, they expressed concern over the possibility of the disease spreading, especially with the influx of foreign visitors expected during the Olympics. The proposed legislation is intended to ensure the safety of these tourists and help bolster public health measures in light of the looming global health crisis.

Important Information

The text on this page is created, in the most part, using Generative AI and so may contain errors or omissions. It is supplied to you without guarantee or warranty of correctness. If you find an error or would like to make a content suggestion please get in contact

Creative Commons Licence The text on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand

Publish Date:7th March 1987
URL:https://www.pridenz.com/paperspast_chp19870307_2_160.html