HIV Australia | Vol. 8 No. 4 | January 2011

http://www.ashm.org.au/HIVLegal/Default.asp

Prosecutions for HIV exposure and transmission have attracted substantial media coverage: a point not lost on those working in HIV-related health care. In late 2008, the Australasian Society for HIV Medicine (ASHM) recognised GPs' growing concerns about a possible increase in such prosecutions. Mindful of the broad ranging legal and regulatory responses affecting healthcare professionals, ASHM commissioned an online resource to address legal regulation across HIV clinical practice.

The resulting Guide to Australian HIV Laws and Policies for Healthcare Professionals ('the Guide') provides a summary of key legislation and policy guidelines, as well as links to the actual legislation and policy through AustLII and other primary resources.

The resource is primarily a text-based website and is refreshingly free of bells and whistles such as flash-based animations, which tend to hinder accessibility and limit functionality across different platforms. The left hand menu of the Guide presents a range of 'chapters' that can be read in sequence, or users can jump straight to their specific area of inquiry or interest. The main menu also provides a detailed reference section for further research, and a 'quick start video guide'.

Subject areas covered by the Guide include:

• Notification of HIV test results
• HIV Testing
• Pre- and Post-test Discussion
• Post-exposure Prophylaxis
• Safe Behaviours and Disclosure
• Public Health Offences
• Low Viral Load
• Antenatal Testing
• Sex work
• Contact Tracing
• Discrimination
• Privacy and Confidentiality
• Duty of Care to Third Parties and Civil Liability
• Management of People with HIV who Place Others at Risk, and
• Criminal Laws.

The resource also includes useful social research and epidemiological data to provide context for legal and policy provisions. On selecting a topic, the requested information is displayed on the right half of the screen, with quick link menus to sub-sections in the chosen topic area, as well as options to print or download chapters for later reference.

Importantly, the Guide also provides state-based information related to many topics, such as state-specific notification statistics, information on public health offences, contact tracing, privacy and confidentiality, and criminal laws, which is also displayed in the quick link sub-menus of each section.

Although the website is targeted at healthcare professionals, its potential reach is far greater, as it is an accessible resource for researchers, HIV service providers and community members, whether wanting to understand laws in their state or to compare laws across jurisdictions. The Guide is also a useful tool for policy and law reform.

This resource helps put HIV and the law clearly back on the agenda, after an apparent lack of activity in the HIV/law nexus since the mid 1990s. The last 18 months has seen significant pieces of work in Australia by the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, the National Association of People Living With HIV/AIDS, the Australian Injecting & Illicit Drug Users League, HIV/AIDS Legal Centre, Scarlet Alliance, and the NSW Sex Workers Outreach Project, as well as the establishment of a Legal Working Group to inform the work of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections. At the international level, the increase in prosecutions for HIV exposure and transmission and the spread of highly problematic laws through Africa has pushed numerous international HIV agencies to publish on the impact of law on HIV, moved 'law' onto the agenda at the 2010 international HIV conference, and resulted in the establishment of no less than a Global Commission on HIV and the Law.

The Guide is also a welcome successor to The 1993 Australian HIV/AIDS Legal Guide, which provided an invaluable resource for many years, but now lacks currency due to numerous changes in laws and the introduction of new policy frameworks since its publication. The Guide has gone some way to this gap in legal resources developed for the Australian context.

Clearly, the Guide cannot replicate legal advice and it provides only minor comment on the administration of listed laws and policy, however the basics are there. As the only available Australian resource centralising Australian law and policy, the Guide exceeds the ASHM's mandate and makes a valuable contribution to current HIV-based texts.

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