BANGKOK, June 20 (AFP) - Organizers of the world's largest AIDS conference due to take place in Thailand next month slammed Sunday a Bangkok hotel's attempts to isolate HIV-positive people as "completely unwarranted".
Activists said staff at the four-star Prince Palace hotel had moved people with HIV who were at a meeting on HIV-AIDS it hosted this month to a single floor and cordoned off a dining area to separate them from other guests.
The incident caused a small firestorm just three weeks before up 20,000 delegates converge in Bangkok for a global forum on the virus.
"Certain actions, such as the use of latex gloves or the segregation of people living with HIV-AIDS within hotels or dining areas, are completely unwarranted," conference co-chair Joep Lange, president of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.
"Such actions constitute discriminatory practices and must be avoided."
The Prince Palace hotel conceded Thursday in a statement that it had shifted delegates to a single floor after discovering some were HIV-positive, but defended its actions by saying it should have been forewarned and that the "human rights" of their staff also had to be taken into consideration.
The hotel had not been recommended by the organisers and will not be used to house delegates to the conference, the statement said.
The statement also said that conference organisers "are now working closely with the service industries in Thailand to correct common misconceptions about people living with HIV-AIDS and the risk of transmission of HIV-AIDS through everyday, casual contact."
"This unfortunate incident underscores the importance of continued public education to eliminate misconceptions about HIV-AIDS that exist not only in Southeast Asia, but in many parts of the world," the conference statement said.
Thailand has received international praise for its efforts to combat the HIV-AIDS pandemic, particularly in the 1990s when it ran a pragmatic campaign to halt the spread of the virus.
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