services for the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS

Public health law should fund and empower public health authorities to provide a comprehensive range of services for the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS, including relevant information and education, access to voluntary testing and counselling, STD and sexual and reproductive health services for men and women, condoms and drug treatment,services and clean injection materials, as well as adequate treatment for HIV and AIDS-related illnesses, including pain prophylaxis.
Apart from surveillance testing and other unlinked testing done for epidemiological purposes, public health legislation should ensure that HIV testing of individuals should only be performed with the specific informed consent of that individual. Exceptions to voluntary testing would need specific judicial authorization, granted only after due evaluation of the important considerations involved in terms of privacy and liberty.
In view of the serious nature of HIV testing and in order to maximize prevention and care, public health legislation should ensure, whenever possible, that pre-and post-test counselling be provided in all cases. With the introduction of home-testing, States should ensure quality control, maximize counselling and referral services for those who use such tests and establish legal and support services for those who are the victims of misuse of such tests by others.
Public health legislation should ensure that people not be subjected to coercive measures such as isolation, detention or quarantine on the basis of their HIV status. Where the liberty of persons living with HIV is restricted, due process protection (e.g. notice, rights of review/appeal, fixed rather than indeterminate periods of orders and rights of representation) should be guaranteed.
Public health legislation should ensure that HIV and AIDS cases reported to public health authorities for epidemiological purposes are subject to strict rules of data protection and confidentiality.Public health legislation should ensure that information relative to the HIV status of an individual be protected from unauthorized collection, use or disclosure in the health-care and other settings and that the use of HIV-related information requires informed consent.
(g) Public health legislation should authorize, but not require, that health-care professionals decide, on the basis of each individual case and ethical considerations, whether to inform their patients’ sexual partners of the HIV status of their patient. Such a decision should only be made in accordance with the following criteria:
(i) The HIV-positive person in question has been thoroughly counselled;
(ii) Counselling of the HIV-positive person has failed to achieve appropriate behavioural changes;
(iii) The HIV-positive person has refused to notify, or consent to the notification of his/her partner(s);
(iv) A real risk of HIV transmission to the partner(s) exists;
(v) The HIV-positive person is given reasonable advance notice;
(vi) The identity of the HIV-positive person is concealed from the partner(s), if this is possible in practice; and
(vii) Follow-up is provided to ensure support to those involved, as necessary.
(h) Public health legislation should ensure that the blood/tissue/organ supply is free of HIV and other blood-borne diseases.