An employment report on people carrying hepatitis B virus released by the Fund for Hepatitis Prevention and Treatment of China shows that about 80% of the foreign companies in China refuse to hire HBV carriers and 96% of them require an HBV test before employing a person.
The survey, according to Chinese media reports, was conducted among the human resource departments of 115 subsidiaries or joint ventures of 98 multinational companies in mainland China, most of which are located in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Guangdong. It turned out that 77% of the human resource departments of these companies said that they would not recruit people carrying HBV. According to a Sina.com media report, this included the human resource departments of Motorola, Siemens, Philips, Foxconn, Sony and Samsung.
Su Chong'ao, secretary general of FHPTC, said that HBV patients do not pose any threat to the public, so it is ignorant for these companies not to hire them. The survey reportedly showed most of these foreign companies refused to hire HBV carriers for fear that they will transmit the virus to other staff.
Currently, most global companies claim that they won't discriminate against HBV patients in offering job opportunities, but they reportedly often fail to implement this policy at their branches in China.
At present, there are more than 120 million HBV carriers in China, accounting for 10% of China's total population.
