Positive life

We are a small group of people who have been associated with the complex consequences of the HIV among our friends and families, our partners and colleagues, and ourselves.

We believe that HIV needs a holistic continuum of care for those living with HIV, as well as the affected. Only information, sustained, sensitive advocacy and access to good health preserving human rights and dignity can begin the process of caring and healing.

You can be part of our efforts in any of the following ways: contact us and contribute by being a part of the family; send us any published material for the resource centre; send us addresses of people we can approach for help, free subscriptions etc; donate anything that this resource centre can use effectively in the form of cash or kind

Also, you can spread the word that we exist! PLWHAs and the directly affected are not the problem but part of the solution
For further information on Positive Life, get in touch with Monalisa Mishra / Ramesh Venkataraman, coordinators, Positive Life, D-2/2466 Vasant Kunj New Delhi, India. Tel.: 91-11-6893751. E- mail:poslife@nde.vsnl.net.in (from the internet)

In response to the Supreme Court ruling that a hospital did not violate medical ethics of confidentiality when it informed the would- be spouse of an HIV- positive person of the person’s HIV status. (AIDS patients have no right to marry: SC. The Times of India. November 17, 1998)

Positive Life responds:

A legal sanction against the right of a PLWHA to marry is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to stop the spread of the virus.

The appellant (‘ X’), a medical professional by training, had donated blood for transfusion. The blood was found to test HIV positive. In India blood donors are not told of their HIV status; the blood is simply discarded.

This is government policy. Instead, the hospital decided to pass the information on. And it chose not to inform X, but the woman he was to marry

The right to privacy is not an absolute right. The concern that marriage between sero- discordant couples may infect an unsuspecting partner is understandable. However, certain points must be made:
- If someone had to be informed, was it not X?
- The judgement refers to the right of a PWA to get married. What if X were not to get married? Unprotected sex does not begin and end with marriage. Does that mean hospitals may routinely inform HIV- positive people’s potential sex partners?
- If partners are aware, sero-discordant couples can have risk- free sex, or they may choose not to have sex.
-The judgement sets a precedent for the disclosure of a PLWHAs status by anyone, in the name of public good, on the basis of a subjective risk perception.