Hospitals may examine Patients for HIV/AIDS without Permission
This is terrible! I cannot believe clinics and doctors are allowed to do this especially as there seems to be no scientific rationale behind the argument.
The clinics suggest that blanket testing for HIV prevents health care workers from getting infected. Surely, health care workers should probably be aware of HIV transmission pathways which includes transmission by infected blood, unprotected sexual intercourse,mother-to-child either by breast feeding or during delivery. Which of these are these clinics worried about?
If you are really worried about infected needle stick injury, that could happen accidentally when you are taking a blood sample. So, you have to take precautions anyway prior to the HIV test result being known. Existing standards in clinical practice expect medical workers to take precautions to reduce needle stick injury or contamination with blood products as routine.
There are rather obvious confidentiality issues and patient rights that are being violated and while the article mentions these issues, the article fails to highlight the poor clinical standards that forms the basis of this policy and the possibility of a dangerous,covert problem of discrimination.
1. If clinics are having to test patients for HIV to avoid infection of their workers, this could only happen if current practices preventing HIV transmission do not exist in these clinics. This is even more worrisome especially if private clinics charging patients exorbitant fees and claiming the best current medical practice are presently not enforcing simple,cheap HIV and infected blood transmission prevention measures.
2. Clinics believe they need to take special precautions if a person is HIV+. This is on the slippery slope to overt discrimination. Where would these special precautions end? Would private clinics treat HIV+ patients differently? Could private clinics refuse treatment to patients who are HIV+? Would clinics be allowed to test for any disease? See this story about HIV discrimination by hospitals.
The entire idea of having universal precautions against infected blood precautions is to avoid this sort of discrimination. Although we know that such discrimination exists, health workers must lead the fight to abolish such discrimination not reinforce it by such ludicrous policy.
Of course, the article does not tell us who has legislated this policy, who ratified it, where it is applicable. But, even if such a policy does not exist, the very thought of such a policy should make us shudder.
1 comment:
hmm...very worrying. very worrying
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