HIV carriers' right to privacy cannot be a risk to others

IN A RECENT DISCUSSION on preventing epidemics, several members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the nation's top legislature, advised revising the law to require HIV carriers and patients to inform others of their condition in certain circumstances. Beijing News comments:

Every citizen has the right to privacy, and those with HIV are no exception. Especially, as certain people discriminate against HIV carriers, the law must protect their privacy and forbid any individual or organization from releasing the information without their consent.

However, problems emerge when not revealing a person has HIV might pose a risk to other people's health. For example, last year a couple married in Nantong, East China's Jiangsu province, but the husband later found the wife had long known she carried HIV without telling him.

There are other situations in which people should reveal they have HIV.

The protection of HIV carriers' privacy must be based on the protection of everyone's legal rights and interests, or it will lead to new inequalities and fail to win widespread support.

Currently the domestic AIDS/HIV Prevention and Control Regulation only requires HIV carriers and patients to tell their information to their sexual partners. However, the HIV virus can be spread via multiple channels, of which unprotected sex is just one. Besides, the regulation has no clause defining what penalties HIV carriers face if they fail in that duty.

It is time for the legislature to consider revising the regulation, so as to better protect the rights of both HIV carriers and other people. That will also make it easier for the society to treat HIV carriers and patients equally.