Translate

Thursday, 28 August 2014

Criminalizing HIV Transmission: Revenge comes at a price



Ian McKee, writing in Social Justice Research Journal (Vol. 138, No. 2), says: "People who are more vengeful tend to be those who are motivated by power, by authority and by the desire for status," because, "they don't want to lose face." Those who have studied motivation for revenge tells us that that although the desire to seek revenge is very human, emotions that fuel revenge vary across cultures. 

But why talk about revenge when the discussion is about criminalization of HIV transmission? Well because, in the law criminalizing transmission of HIV is the desire to punish people we think engage in wilful/deliberate transmission of the virus. It does not seem to matter that the harm caused by these laws, far outweighs their presumed benefits. 

I could never write better than UNAIDS on this topic – and they have provided excellent guidelines on the appropriate legal approach to willful transmission of HIV – Here are their guidelines

In Kenya both the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act, 2006 - part VI, and the Sexual Offences Act, criminalize willful transmission of HIV. The sexual offense Act, speaks not just of HIV but also of other sexually transmitted diseases. Yet it is the HIV and AIDS prevention and Control Act that goes overboard. It places an unreasonable demand requiring a “person who is and is aware of being infected with HIV ….[to] inform, in advance, any sexual contact ….of that fact.”

No one can argue on the need to protect the public good, but it makes no sense at all to use strategies that are self-defeating. As the UNAIDS documents notes “such application [of laws] risks undermining public health and human rights….[and] directly contradict efforts to prevent HIV transmission by encouraging safer sexual practices, voluntary HIV testing, and voluntary disclosure.” 

Moreover we now know that “much onward transmission takes place soon after a person has acquired HIV, when his/her infectiousness is high and before the person knows or suspects s/he is HIV positive or that s/he may be passing the virus onto others” so really, creating conditions that criminalize people on account of their health status, cannot be about good public health reasons. 

Methinks it is about our cultural disposition to revenge – even when we know such revenge makes a bad situation worse. Since the launch of the “Kenya HIV Prevention Revolution Road Map” last week, there have been many stories in the media on HIV – yet, it deserves to mention that in the same way we cannot possibly “treat ourselves out of this epidemic.” It is also a fact that we cannot “arrest ourselves out of the epidemic.”

No comments:

Post a Comment