Their Audacity knows no boundaries;
Now they are condering forcing people to reveal/declare their
sexual lifestyles? Where will this STOP?
===========================
Should AIDS testing be mandatory?
By Tan Hui Leng, TODAY | Posted: 20 July 2007 0657
hrs
Amid startling statistics that one in 350 hospital patients are
HIV-positive, at least one voluntary welfare organisation here has
called for mandatory testing of high-risk groups, in what some have
described as a highly controversial and intrusive move.
The group Focus on the Family said it would be submitting a
proposal, drafted together with doctors, to the Ministry of Health
(MOH) soon.
High-risk groups, such as men who visit sex workers and
sexually-active gay men, should go for compulsory testing, said its
director, Mr Tan Thuan Seng.
"We should not allow people who choose high-risk lifestyles to
avoid testing and thereby subject innocents in their households and
medical workers to unfair risks of infection," said Mr Tan.
"These undiagnosed infected are walking time-bombs as they have the
potential to knowingly or unknowingly infect others."
On Tuesday, it was revealed that a recent MOH study of over 3,000
anonymous blood samples collected in hospitals showed that 0.28 per
cent of those who thought they were free of the disease were in
fact HIV-positive.
This was followed by the news that the MOH is investigating the
case of a man suspected of spreading the virus knowingly.
However, MPs and AIDS volunteers TODAY spoke to were concerned
about how the identification of such HIV-positive carriers is
intrusive and stigmatises those affected.
"In implementing it, it's hard to not intrude into the privacy and
rights of individuals," said chairman of the AIDS Business
Alliance, Mr Zulkifli Baharuddin.
Mr Benedict Jacob-Thambiah, an Action for AIDS volunteer and the
programme director of Heat Consultants, which provides HIV
education at the workplace, agreed.
"Mandatory testing of any group only serves to stigmatise, isolate
and deepen discrimination. It is not something I would advocate as
I do not think any Singaporean should be subject to something that
is patently wrong. It does no one any good," he said.
Since December 2004, pregnant women have been subjected to opt-out
HIV tests as part of standard antenatal screening here. Only one
case of mother-to-child transmission has occurred, and that was
because the mother refused her HIV test until very late in her
pregnancy, according to the MOH.
Last year, Singapore experienced a record high of 357 new
HIV-positive cases.
Making testing compulsory even for small high-risk groups could
pose some implementation problems, said deputy chairman of the
Government Parliamentary Committee for Health, Dr Lam Pin
Min.
"It's hard to identify persons in the high-risk groups unless they
declare it themselves," he said. "It also makes it very difficult
to draw a line on whether you visit sex workers or are sexually
liberal or promiscuous.
"So, if you make it a law to self-declare, does it mean that you're
breaking the law if you're in one category or the other?"
Those TODAY spoke to were all in favour of better public education,
particularly as the HIV/AIDS situation here is not seen as
dire.
"I don't think the situation has come to the point where there is a
real epidemic that requires an intrusion into private lives," said
AIDS Business Alliance chairman Zulkifli. "We always try to
persuade and cajole people, and, in most cases, they
respond."
