States may be required to report HIV test results

posted 5-5-97

A proposal before Congress that would require nationwide reporting of HIV test results is drawing attention to the issue of how best to protect the rights of HIV-infected people while safeguarding public health.

The “HIV Prevention Act of 1997” could significantly change current policies about who knows the names of HIV-infected people and how that information is used. The bill mandates that states report the identities of all people who test positive for HIV or seek treatment for HIV at a physician’s office, as well as the identities of their sexual and needle-sharing partners, to the federal government. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would use the information to establish a system to warn partners of potential infection.

The bill would also allow healthcare professionals to deny treatment to any patient who refuses to take an HIV test before surgery, and require healthcare professionals who have HIV to inform the patient before performing surgery. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Thomas Coburn, MD, R-Okla., and supported by the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA says it has “long supported confidential reporting of all HIV-positive people, including physicians and other healthcare workers.” The AMA says the bill balances between “the needs of HIV-infected patients with the prevention needs of those who are not infected.”

The AIDS Action Council, which is coordinating a lobbying effort against the bill, says the act calls for states to foot the bill for costly testing-related measures without any additional funding. Implementation of this legislation would require hundreds of statutory or regulatory changes nationwide and cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the council says.

In addition, these unfunded federal mandates “will only divert resources from real prevention efforts and further stigmatize and frighten people living with and at risk for HIV,” says the council. And they may be duplicative; many community and state programs already notify sex and needle-sharing partners of their risks of HIV infection, according to the council.

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