HIV and confidentiality in India.

A review of literature in the Indian. database provides only a few anecdotal reports on the questions of informing the spouse of an HIV positive person, the role of blood banks and confidentiality in the workplace, with no comprehensive studies on the subject. One approach to the question could be to look at the mechanisms of discrimination, the cause and consequence of such practices and how we can combat the discrimination by health care providers. The major malpractices of health professions toward people with AIDS (PWAs) are: + testing patients without their consent or without pre-test counseling, + denying treatment, discriminating, and + breaching confidentiality. There are variations in these practices depending on the affiliation of the doctors (private doctors as opposed to those attached to public hospitals, rural and urban practititioners, their specialisation, and so on). The most disturbing trend is the low level of knowledge about HIV among health care providers in many parts oflndia (we have data from a study in Bangalore) and in many other countries.