ISTANBUL (Reuters) -- AIDS awareness campaigners slammed a private Turkish television channel on Wednesday for broadcasting the names of 40 prostitutes it said were infected with HIV.
"Death List" was the caption under which Star TV carried a list of the women on Tuesday -- World AIDS Day -- who it said were of Russian and Eastern European origin."To have done this is greatly immoral," said a spokesman for Turkey's Fight Against AIDS group. "There is a patient's right to privacy, regardless of who that person is."
Star TV representatives said they had procured a list of more than 800 people infected with HIV from the health ministry, but chose only to broadcast foreigners' names.
HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, leads to AIDS.
Russian and Eastern European women, who have become a presence in urban Turkish red light districts since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, are viewed dimly by Turkey's media.