Public Health Bill retains 'discriminatory' clauses

GOTHATAONE MOENG
Staff Writer | Friday March 29, 2013 00:00

Minister of Health Reverend Doctor John Seakgosing yesterday presented the controversial bill for the committee stage, and opposed almost all clauses legislators wanted amended.

One of the contentious clauses, which opposition legislators Isaac Mabiletsa and Nehemiah Modubule wanted scrapped, seeks to make an offence the known transmission of HIV to any 'sexual contact, care giver or any person with whom sharp objects are shared.'

Clause 116.1 (b) legislates that a person who is aware of carrying HIV antibodies, or who is aware of being infected should inform, in advance, any sexual contact or care giver or person with whom sharp objects are shared of that fact. Legislators raised the question of how one would be proved to have been aware of the fact before the transmission has taken place.

Bernard Bolele of Mahalapye South cautioned that the word 'aware' would mean that the person would have been fully conscious of their HIV status at the time the HIV virus is transmitted and that the only way to prove this would be for court to delve through the person's medical records.  Kgalagadi North MP Phillip Khwae argued that since the only way to prove that one was aware of their HIV status would be to go through their records, this might discourage people from going for HIV tests, knowing that proven ignorance of their status may protect them from disciplinary action. 

Clause 116 also provides for an HIV positive person to ask, in writing, a medical practitioner to, inform their sexual contacts or caregivers. If the medical practitioner treating the person becomes aware that their patient has not informed their lovers, the clause provides for the medical practitioner to do so.  The clause also provides for the isolation of an HIV positive person who is found to be likely to knowingly or recklessly place another person at risk of becoming infected with HIV. MPs also condemned the bill for placing the onus on the HIV positive person, saying that sex is a joint activity between two people and therefore both should be responsible for protecting themselves. MPs also said that the bill will violate the right to privacy as enshrined in the bill of rights. 

Modubule condemned what he said is a clear move by government to make HIV testing mandatory, as illustrated by sections where people may be required to undergo testing in instances where they are unable to give consent.  He argued that in such instances, it is the next of kin, instead of health officials - and a court order given by a magistrate- that consent should be sought from.

'It is clear that it is the intention of government to have the HIV test as compulsory. Why don't you just declare it so?' he asked.

Minister Seakgosing said yesterday that this clause is meant to address reckless behaviour in order to protect those that are to be put at risk.  He said that it has become clear over the course of Botswana's fight against HIV that care givers and sexual partners have been knowingly placed at risk.