Shoura to refer new HIV prevention law to Cabinet

The Shoura Council will refer to the Cabinet in the next few days a new regulation on HIV prevention. The regulation, a modified version of an old one, consists of 30 articles and details the patients’ rights and obligations, Okaz newspaper reported Wednesday.
The modifications came following recommendations from government representatives and experts and after the Shoura Council’s health and environment committee attended forums and symposiums in other countries.
The committee also looked at drafts submitted by the National Society of Human Rights and the experts commission.
The regulation, said the newspaper, categorizes HIV as a contagious disease and lists a number of precautionary procedures to prevent infection. The law obliges health departments to provide health and psychological care to HIV carriers, respect their rights, as well as create awareness about the disease, its transmission, danger, and how to avoid it.
The regulation prohibits health departments from denying health care to any HIV carrier, no matter how he or she was infected.
The National Program to Encounter HIV should coordinate with other health departments to activate precautionary and rehabilitation procedures as well as specify the reference laboratories for diagnosis. The regulation obliges the health department to send samples suspected to be positive to reference laboratories to verify the infection. It obliges all health departments to report any suspected case with confidentiality.
Health care should be provided to pregnant women carrying HIV, and it is prohibited to forcibly make her abort the baby or deprive her from her child custody because of the infection.
An HIV carrier cannot be denied education nor can an infected person's work contract be terminated because of the infection, unless he or she intended to infect someone else or harm the others, according to the directive.
The regulation stresses the prohibition of an HIV test for employment, except for teachers in public education, applicants of health and military institutes, all medical cadre applicants, all military job applicants, premarital tests and pregnant women in addition to any case the minister of health should consider to include in the test in coordination with the medical services council.
The regulation says that all non-Saudi HIV carriers should be deported to their countries or any country they choose.