Video HIV-positive people will be able to join the gendarmerie, military firefighters and the armed forces, announces Minister Sébastien Lecornu

A decree to put an end to “discrimination on principle”. The Minister of the Armed Forces announced, Monday, May 8 in the “Four Truths” of France 2, that HIV-positive people could soon become soldiers. Sebastien Lecornu has “Issued an order which will review all the criteria of aptitude to enter the armed forces”to amend a rule that has been in place since the 1980s. “It will be published in the coming days” and will apply to the “gendarmerie, the Paris and Marseille firefighters, and all the armed forces”.

The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had proposed to the Minister of the Armed Forces to put an end to this device, in a letter sent on Tuesday May 2. “The medical criteria for aptitude for integration into the national gendarmerie or the military corps of firefighters [à Paris et Marseille] do not currently allow HIV-positive people to access these professions, he recalled. This state of affairs, linked to the military status and the constraints it imposes, seems to have to evolve.

At the end of November 2022, this discrimination in hiring targeting people living with HIV had already been lifted for the police, recalls Radio France. The government then repealed by decree the application of “Sigycop”, a device for evaluating physical fitness used in several public service professions. Applied strictly, this assessment, based on a score from 1 to 6, classified HIV-positive people as unfit. The latest scientific studies have shown that HIV-positive people receiving antiretroviral treatment have an undetectable viral load and do not transmit HIV.