Re: Are we heading towards mandatory testing?

[Guest guest]

Dear Forum

Re: /message/8667

Capt Kumar is at last saying it out loud. The idea that testing equal stigma has

been a crazy idea from the start. If people had been tested and contact tracing

done early on, it would have saved 40 million lives. How much more death and

suffering before;

1) we do proper information on non-sexual contamination via blood (dental care,

injections, tatooing, blood collection, blood transfusion, ) and

2) we do contact tracing and really help people stop contaminating others.

Recommendations that all were a condom is idiocy. It has not worked for 25 years

and will not start working now, it's not even intended to work! It's a sham.

My friend Mariette Correa has published a book with Dr Deoddata Gore who manages

a drop in center for HIV (and Gisselquist) and their book " Blood-borne

HIV " is a 'how to' protect yourself for everybody, everywhere. It is published

by Orient Longman Private limited in Hyderabad and all money from sales is given

by the authors to the drop in center of PLWHAs of Dr Gore

Time to end stigma of PLWHAS and stigmatize the fools managing the global and

national AIDS campaign is now!

Nance

Garance Upham

e-mail: <garance@...>

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

Re: /message/8667

Mandatory testing goes with a number of positive and negative

outcomes. When we say mandatory, it is applicable to everybody at all

stages in life, in all walks of life, and will open up a whole number

of issues.Some questions are as follows--

1. Who will administer the test?

2. Who will disclose the information to the patient?

3. Will there be a registry?

5. Will there be a second test in a few months?

6. Will there be counseling available while disclosing the results?

7. Will the dependents of the tested-one be informed (either for

positive or negative outcomes)?

8. Where will the disclosure of the sero-positive status fall in the

legal panorama (will there be mandatory information disclosure to the

partner, patients of a sero-positive clinician...etc.)?

9. How will the aspect of social stigma be handled (micro-aspects as

well as macro-aspects)?

10. Have we studied the outcomes of mandatory testing in other

countries long enough before we apply it to the local population,

culture and social settings?

11. Is HIV and AIDS the only disease this applies to (there are a

whole number of other diseases that are comorbidities and some even

more potent as disease and health outcomes)?

12. When we have a lot of easily preventable infectious diseases that

are plaguing the population, why are we maily concentrating on HIV?

I was the first J & J Medical Inc. Infectious Diseases Post Doctoral

Fellow in Dentistry in the early 1990s and the same questions are

popping up now. It still has not been implemented in the place these

debates came up. Should we not wait and use a medical model of asking

the patient during a medical contact/visit rather than make it

mandatory?

I have now been working with the people in India in trying to set up

a higher level of Dental Safety including Occupational Safety for

Oral Health Professionals in India and get this question every time I

speak in India.

Best Wishes,

Raghunath Puttaiah BDS, MPH

Plano, Texas, USA

e-mail: <puttaiah.raghunath@...>