AEGiS-APPJ: AIDS: The Rights and Duties of Health-Care Provider

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1991. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

AIDS: The Rights and Duties of Health-Care Provider

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 37-40
C. Manuel et al.

In relation to AIDS and health-care providers, legal requirements amount to little: what is to be found in the relevant texts concerns recommendations on precautions to be observed when treating infected patients and the conditions that define professional illness and/or professional accidents among health-care workers who seroconvert after exposure to HIV in the occupational setting (Sweden, Denmark, and France). The real debate concerning the basic problems facing health-care providers has been raised in the medical literature, and this debate has led to a number of publications and "recommendations" offered by medical associations, particularly in the United States, concerning refusal to provide treatment. We will be concerned here only with problems relating to health-care providers. The question of patients' rights is addressed elsewhere in this issue. Let us begin with the obligation to provide treatment, which will lead us to discuss the professional risk of infection. This risk will lead us, in turn, to consider the possible demand by health-care providers that all patients be screened for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. We will conclude with a discussion.
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