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.