Anti-Discrimination The Federal Government obligates the Laender to require targeted serial screenings for tuberculosis for persons who are not subject to regular health monitoring and who have an increased risk of tuberculosis, in order to prevent the introduction of this disease to the greatest degree possible. This obligation is implemented very differently by the individual Laender. Mandatory TB screenings for migrants from certain countries In addition to refugees, persons eligible for asylum, prostitutes, homeless persons, inmates of correctional institutions and sometimes persons in drug substitution programmes, foreigners who do not fall into the above mentioned categories must undergo serial TB screenings in the first years of their residency in Austria. In most of the Laender, persons from countries in the EU and EEA, as well as from Switzerland, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are exempt. Other Laender describe the group of persons who must undergo TB screenings generally as persons who “were exposed to a particularly high risk of infection prior to their entry into Austria” or persons “whose personal or social situation causes a serious immune weakness or high risk of infection that are not only temporary”. Furthermore, the question of how often they must undergo this screening is regulated differently from Land to Land. In five Laender, it depends on the result of the first screening, but in any case, annual screening is mandatory in the first three to seven years of their residency in Austria. In four Laender, the screening must only be repeated if necessary. Different regulations in each Land In the 2014 reporting year, a woman from Serbia, a non-EU country, turned to the AOB. She had been living in Carinthia for three years and thus far, had to undergo a mandatory TB X-ray screening every year. She perceived it as discrimination that despite a lack of pathological findings, she was ordered to undergo screenings in the next two years as well. She referred to studies by the WHO, according to which Serbia does not show an increased risk for tuberculosis. If, for example, she lived in Burgenland, she would not have to undergo any more screenings, as the regional legislation there requires such screenings only for three years and not for five years like in Carinthia. In some other Laender, a follow-up screening is required only when necessary. From a medical standpoint, it was not comprehensible for her that in her case, tuberculosis could still break out. In accordance with Section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), mandatory tuberculosis screenings are an interference with the protected physical integrity of the individual and are permissible only if they are prescribed by law, necessary for the protection of health and reasonable. Unnecessary or excessive measures would amount to discrimination based on nationality. In order to be able to assess this correctly, the AOB first of all obtained a medical opinion from the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene of the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, which is the national reference AOB obtains medical opinion 49