South Africa: Forced or involuntary disclosure in healthcare settings disproportionately affecting women resulting in discrimination and gender-based violence, despite constitutional protections

Editor’s note: This story is part of a Special Report produced by The GroundTruth Project called “Laws of Men: Legal systems that fail women.” It is produced with support from the Ford Foundation. Reported by Tracy Jarrett and Emily Judem.

An HIV diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, thanks to advances in medicine and treatment in the last 30 years. But stigma against HIV/AIDS and fear of discrimination still run strong in South Africa, despite legal protections, as well as drastically improved treatment, prevention techniques and education. Today an estimated 19 percent of South African adults ages 15-49 are living with HIV.

And women, who represent about 60 percent of people living with HIV in South Africa, face a disproportionately large array of consequences, including physical violence and abuse.

“Upon disclosure of women’s HIV positive status,” reads a 2012 study by the AIDS Legal Network on gender violence and HIV, “women’s lives change, due to fear and the continuum of violence and abuse perpetrated against them.”

Although forced or involuntary disclosure of one’s HIV status — along with any discrimination that may result from that disclosure — was made illegal by South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, experts and advocates say that public knowledge of these laws is limited and the legal system is not equipped to implement them.

Not only are women disproportionately affected by HIV, but they are also more likely to know their status. More women get tested, said Rukia Cornelius, community education and mobilization manager at the NGO Sonke Gender Justice, based in Johannesburg and Cape Town, because unlike men, women need antenatal care.

And often, she said, clinics give women HIV tests when they come in for prenatal visits.

The way hospitals and clinics are set up also are not always conducive to protecting privacy, said Alexandra Muller, researcher at the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town.

“People who provide services in the public system, at the community level, are community members,” said Muller. “This is an important dynamic when we think about stigma and disclosure.”

Doctors and nurses can see 60 to 80 patients per day in an overcrowded facility with shared consultation rooms, Muller said.

“There’s not a lot of consideration for how is a clinic set up,” added Cornelius, so that “a health care worker who has done your test and knows your status doesn’t shout across the room to the other health care worker, ‘okay, this one’s HIV-positive, that file goes over there.’”

Once HIV-positive women disclose their status, willingly or not,they are disproportionately affected by stigma because of the direct link between HIV and gender violence.

 

[Feature] Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation

Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation

A pre-conference meeting for AIDS 2014

In July 2014, at a meeting held to just prior to the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia around 150 participants from all regions of the world came together to discuss the overly broad use of the criminal law to control and punish people living with HIV – otherwise known as ‘HIV criminalisation’.

The meeting was hosted by Living Positive Victoria, Victorian AIDS Council/Gay Men’s Health Centre, National Association of People Living with HIV Australia and the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, with the support of AIDS and Rights Alliance of Southern Africa, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Global Network of People Living with HIV, HIV Justice Network, International Community of Women Living with HIV, Sero Project and UNAIDS.

The meeting was financially supported by the Victorian Department of Health and UNAIDS.

This highlights video (12 mins, 50 secs) was directed, filmed and edited by Nicholas Feustel, with interviews and narration by Edwin J Bernard.  The video was produced by georgetown media for the HIV Justice Network.

Download the highlights video from:http://vimeo.com/hivjustice/beyondblame

Below is a feature story based on the transcript of the highlights video, with additional links and information. You can also read Felicita Hikuam’s excellent (and remarkably quickly-written) summary of the day in ‘Mujeres Adelante’ and Daniel Reeders’s impressive collection of tweets from the meeting.

FEATURE STORY

A day to come together, find solutions, and move forward

Paul Kidd: On behalf of Living Positive Victoria, the Victorian AIDS Council, Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, and the National Association of People with HIV Australia, welcome to Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation. We hope today’s event is inspiring and productive and that it kicks off the discussion about HIV criminalisation that will continue through the week and beyond.

Edwin Bernard: I think this is the largest HIV Criminalisation Pre-Conference to date at an International AIDS Conference. So the idea of the meeting is to bring people together. People who are working on this issue, who are interested in learning more about it, and we’re going to really work hard to come together, find solutions, and move forward.

Julian Hows: GNP+ has been involved in this issue of criminalisation since 2002, 2003, when we noticed an increase in the rates of prosecution in Europe effectively and started the first scan of the 53 signatory countries of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This has since become the Global Criminalisation Scan, an international ‘clearing-house’ of resources, research, and initiatives on punitive laws and policies impacting people living with HIV.

Jessica Whitbread: And ICW are really, really excited to be here and part of this. Criminalisation is a huge issue for us. Over 50% of people living with HIV are women and many of these laws initially and still continue to be created as a way to protect women when actually they put us more at risk.

Getting the criminal law changed and out of the HIV response

The meeting began with a surprise announcement by the Minister of Health for Victoria, David Davis, about Australia’s only HIV-specific criminal law, Section 19A of the Victorian Crimes Act. Read more about the campaign to reform the law here.

David Davis: And as a further step in our efforts to reduce the impact of HIV and reduce stigma and discrimination, the coalition government will amend section 19A of the Crimes Act 1958 to ensure that it is non-discriminatory.

Following the announcement Victoria’s Shadow Health Minister, Gavin Jennings, committed to removing (and not just amending) Section 19A within the next 12 months, should Labor win the state election in November.

A keynote address by the Honourable Michael Kirby, a former Justice of the High Court of Australia, and a member of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, reminded us why an overly broad criminal justice apporach to prevention does more harm than good.

Michael Kirby: In the big picture of this great world epidemic, the criminal law has a trivial role to play. What is most important is getting the law changed and out, not getting the law into the struggle against HIV and AIDS.

The Iowa example: laws are subject to change and should be subject to change

The meeting then focused on Iowa in the United States where both law reform and judicial rulings have limited the overly broad use of the criminal law.

Matt McCoy: You know, in Iowa, we had a very bad law on the books, but it’s not unlike a lot of other places in the country in the United States and in the world. So there was no need for transmission, and with it, the penalty was so extreme, a mandatory lifetime sex offender registry and 25 years in prison.

Watch the video that Senator McCoy showed at the meeting explaning how law reform in Iowa happened.

Sean Strub: Iowa is a conservative farm-belt state. And the effort there began with a small group of people with HIV who started organising others with HIV and educating their own communities and then educating public health officials and reframing the issue in terms of a public health issue rather than simply an issue of justice for people with HIV. Last month, we held a conference at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. It was the first national conference on HIV criminalisation in the US. The Friday before our conference began, Governor Branstad in Iowa signed a criminalisation reform measure and made Iowa the first state in the United States to subtantively reform and modernise their statute.

Two videos of the HIV Is Not A Crime conference (also known as the Grinnell Gathering) are available.  One shows the opening ceremony and can be viewed on the Sero website.  A second video highlights the voices of US HIV criminalisation survivors featured at the meeting, and can be viewed on the Sero website.

Nick Rhoades: About a week after the conference was over, the timing was just a little bit off, nonetheless, it’s fantastic. My conviction was overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court. Yeah. Thank you… It’s kinda groundbreaking, their decision, and I, first of all, think that it’s going to have an effect beyond Iowa’s borders, but it basically said that there has to be more than a theoretical chance of transmission to be prosecuted under the law. And previously, that’s not been the case. Basically, it was just if you didn’t disclose, and you had sex, that that would be enough to convict someone. So, for the first time, they basically said that factors such as using protection, being on antiretroviral medication, having an undetectable viral load specifically, should affect whether or not prosecution is able to happen.

Senator McCoy took the opportunity to urge parliamentarians to rethink how they treat HIV in a criminal context.

Matt McCoy: Many of these laws went into effect in the United States during the AIDS crisis and the scares that society had around the issue, and in many cases they were put into effect using a one-size-fits-all measure. And so this is a great opportunity to go back and to revisit that and to realise that our laws are subject to change and should be subject to change.

Science can change laws and limit prosecutions

A number of countries in Europe have also recently revisited their criminal laws, policies or practices. A poster, Developments in criminal law following increased knowledge and awareness of the additional prevention benefit of antiretroviral therapy, presented at AIDS 2014 by the HIV Justice Network, showed where and how this has taken place.

Edwin Bernard: We have to salute the Netherlands, the very first place in the world that actually, way before the Swiss statement, between 2004 and 2007, managed to change the application of the law through a variety of Supreme Court rulings, but also because of advocacy that happened with advocates and healthcare workers and people in the community who limited the role of the criminal law to only intentional exposure or transmission. Denmark was the only country in Western Europe that had an HIV-specific criminal law, and a huge amount of advocacy went on behind the scenes and that law was suspended in 2011 based on the fact that the law was about a serious, life-threatening illness, and the reality was that in Denmark, people living with HIV have exactly the same life expectancy as people without HIV. And so the law just couldn’t apply anymore. And so, we hope that the places like Denmark and the Netherlands will provide inspiration for the rest of us.

Urgent need to focus on global South

But with two-thirds of all HIV-specific criminal laws enacted in the global South, there is now an urgent need to re-focus our efforts.

Patrick Eba: For a long time, we have been saying that there is no prosecution happening in the Global South, particularly in Africa, because we were lacking the information to be able to point to those instances of criminalisation. In fact, there is a lot of prosecution that is happening, and in the past year, if you look at the data that is being maintained by the HIV Justice Network, it is clear. We’ve seen the case in Uganda. We know of a decision that came out some time late last year in South Africa. We know of a number of cases in Kenya, in Gabon, in Cameroon [and especially in Zimbabwe]; and these really show that where we celebrate and are able today to know what is happening in the Global North, our lack of understanding of the situation in the Global South is one that requires more attention.

Dora Musinguzi: Uganda is right now grappling with lots of human rights and legal issues, and it’s going to be such a high climb to really convince our governments, our people, government agencies to make sure that we really have this reform of looking at HIV from a human rights angle, public [health] angle, gender justice angle, if we are going to achieve the gains that we have known to achieve as a country. …But we stand strong in this, we are not giving up. We are looking to a future where we shall challenge this criminalisation, and we hope to come back with a positive story.

Workshops on advocacy messages, science and alternatives to a punitive criminal justice approach

After the morning plenary sessions, participants then attended one of three workshops. The first workshop explored how to get advocacy messages right, in terms of what arguments need to be delivered by whom and to whom.

Laurel Sprague: We talked about the importance of stories. In particular, the stories of people who have been prosecuted, both because of the dignity it gives them to be able to share their own experience, and also because what we’re seeing is so broadly understood to be disproportionate once the details come out.

Laurel’s rapporteur notes can be downloaded in full here.  For an example of advocacy messagaging aimed at communities impacted by HIV see this video from Queensland Positive People.

A second workshop highlighted the way that up-to-date science on HIV-related risks has limited the application of the criminal law in Sweden and Canada.

David Mejia-Canales: Really mobilising their scientists, their researchers and really connecting with the lawyers, the judiciary, the prosecutors and putting to them the best evidence that they have.

Download the Powerpoint presentation given by Cecile Kazatchine of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network here.

The third workshop examined alternatives to a punitive criminal justice system approach, and the risks and benefits of using, for example, public health law or restorative justice.

Daniel Reeders: So if someone shows up at a police station or talks to their doctor about being exposed or infected with HIV, a restorative justice approach would talk about giving them an opportunity to work that issue through with the person who they are otherwise trying to report, either for criminal prosecution or public health management. It acknowledges that people experience HIV infection as an injury and that there is a lack of a process offering them an opportunity to heal.

Daniel’s entire rapporteur report can be read on his blog.

Going home with more ideas and tools and inspiration to continue our work

As the meeting came to a close participants appreciated the day as a rare and much needed opportunity to discuss advocacy strategies.

Paul Kidd: What a day! It is just so amazing to be in this room with all of these incredible people and the sense you have of how much passion and energy and commitment there is around this issue.

Richard Elliott: Even as we face numerous setbacks in our own context sometimes, we see that in fact people are making breakthroughs elsewhere and then that helps us put pressure domestically on decision makers, on legislators, on judges.

Michaela Clayton: It’s important to learn from how people have achieved successes and what have been peoples’ problems in achieving successes in different countries in addressing criminalisation. So for us it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn from others.

Dora Musinguzi: I was encouraged to know that the struggle is not only for us in Africa, in Uganda, and I was also encouraged to know that our colleagues have made progress, and so we can.

Sean Strub: I think everywhere that there is an effort for this advocacy for reform, it is a constantly evolving effort. And the fact that the HIV Justice Network and others brought together this global community which is incredibly mutually supportive. I think of any aspect of the epidemic, I can’t think of an area where there is more collegiality and mutual respect than those of us who’ve centered our work around criminalisation reform. That’s what we’re seeing here in Melbourne, just an expansion of that, and all of us going home with more ideas and tools and inspiration to continue our work.

To remain connected with the global advocacy movement against overly broad HIV criminalisation, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and sign the Oslo Declaration on HIV Criminalisation to join our mailing list.

Venezuela: National Assembly unanimously passes new rights-based law that protects people living with HIV from discrimination in all areas of life

On August 14th, the National Assembly (NA) of Venezuela passed a set of laws that, among other functions, ensure the rights of people carrying the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and their families. The Law on Protection of People with HIV will aim to prevent discrimination and provide health care to AIDS patients as well as those who are HIV positive. “This law is born of the living history of these patients and family, who suffers discrimination he faced, he had no right to health, education, work, sport, recreation, housing, vehicle, and this law lay that story they told us the family and patients, “ said Vice President of the Permanent Commission for Integrated Social Development, Henry Ventura. (from http://lainfo.es/en/2014/08/14/venezuela-will-protect-people-with-hiv/)

The bill guarantees HIV-positive people equal conditions in terms of the right to work and hold public office, to education, healthcare, culture and sports, the benefits of social programmes, bank loans, confidentiality about their health status and respect for their prívate lives. It also states that having AIDS cannot be grounds for the suspension of paternity rights, while establishing that families are responsable for caring for and protecting people living with HIV.

The law guarantees equality for young people, because 40 percent of new cases are in the 15-24 age group. It also does so in the case of women, for whom it orders that special care be provided during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period, as well as for people with disabilities and prisoners. The bill establishes penalties, disciplinary measures and fines for those found guilty of discrimination.

The idea is to prevent a repeat of situations such as one faced by a schoolteacher in a city in western Venezuela, who remains anonymous at her request. She was fired after a campaign against her was mounted by parents who discovered that she had gone to the AIDS unit in a hospital to undergo exams. However, the miliary and the police are exempt from the protective provisions against discrimination.

“We do not agree with that exception,” Estevan Colina, an activist with the Venezuelan Network of Positive People, told IPS. “No one should be excluded and we hope for progress on that point when parliament’s Social Development Commission studies it and it goes to the plenary for the second debate,” which will be article by article.

Nieves is confident that the second reading will overturn the military-police exception. But more important, said the head of ACCSI, “is the positive aspect of the law, starting with the unanimous acceptance of a human rights issue by political groups that are so much at loggerheads in Venezuela’s polarised society.”

The law, which NGOs and activists expect to pass this year, will give a boost to anti-AIDS campaigns. The support will be similar in importance to that given by a July 1998 Supreme Court ruling that ordered public health institutions to provide free antiretrovial treatment to all people living with HIV.

India: Supportive, protective HIV law introduced in the Rajya Sabha (upper house)

Bill to end HIV/AIDS discrimination introduced – A bill aiming to protect people with HIV/AIDS against discrimination was introduced in the Rajya Sabha Tuesday. The HIV/AIDS (Prevention and Control) Bill 2014 was introduced in the upper house amid din.

The draft of the bill was finalised in 2006, and civil society groups and HIV/AIDS-affected people have long been demanding passage of the draft legislation. Under the proposed law, HIV/AIDS-affected people will be provided protection against discrimination in employment, healthcare, education, travel and insurance, in both public as well as private sectors.

The bill proposes imprisonment and fine for those spreading hatred and discrimination against HIV patients. According to official information, a fine up to Rs.10,000 and two years’ imprisonment has been proposed as punishment for spreading hatred against people with HIV/AIDS.

The bill also proposes a legal commitment to provide Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) by the government to the patients as far as possible.

Switzerland: New handbook for parliamentarians on effective HIV laws includes case study and interview with Green MP Alec von Graffenried

A new publication from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), written by Veronica Oakeshott, is an excellent new resource to help inform advocacy efforts to remove punitive laws and policies that impede the HIV response.

Aimed at parliamentarians, ‘Effective Laws to End HIV and AIDS: Next Steps for Parliaments’ (aussi disponible en français) is a practical handbook showing which types of laws are helpful and unhelpful in the HIV response, and provides examples of legislation from around the world that have been effective in limiting new HIV infections.

It also includes case studies and interviews with some of the parliamentarians involved in law reform, most notably with Swiss MP Alec Von Graffenried whose last minute amendment resulted in the new Law on Epidemics containing a clause that only criminalised intentional disease transmission.

Other case studies highlighted in the handbook include: decriminalisation of sex work in New Zealand; decriminalisation of personal drug use in Portugal; ending discrimination against people living with HIV in Mongolia: and legal recognition for transgender and intersex people in South Africa.

The Swiss Law on Epidemics was finally passed, following a national referendum, in September 2013.  However, it won’t come into effect until January 2016.

Below is the section explaining how and why the Swiss law reform process took place. It’s an excellent example of how advocates saw an opportunity to work with clinicians, scientists and key parliamentarians in order to make a difference.  It also shows that the law reform process can be a slow and complex undertaking. Patience here is definitely a virtue.

Switzerland: Decriminalisation of unintentional HIV transmission and exposure

Alec Von Graffenried, MP, Switzerland, 2013. “I am delighted my amendment was successful. We can still prosecute for malicious, intentional transmission of HIV. But I expect those cases will be very rare. What has changed is that now people living with HIV – which these days is a manageable condition – will be able to go about their private relations without the interference of the law. They can access medical services without fear. All the evidence suggests that this is a better approach for public health.”

Name of act

The Epidemics Act 2013

Summary

Repeals and replaces the old Epidemics Act and in doing so, changes Article 231 of the Swiss Penal Code, which in the past has been used to prosecute people living with HIV for transmission and exposure, including cases where this was unintentional. The changes mean that a prosecution can only take place if the motive of the accused is to infect with a dangerous disease. Therefore, there should be no further cases for negligence or cases where the motive was not malicious (i.e. normal sexual relationships).

Why the law is important for HIV

Criminalization of HIV transmission, exposure or non-disclosure creates a disincentive for testing and gives non-infected individuals false confidence that they will be informed of any infection. In reality, their partner may not even know his or her HIV status and everyone should be responsible for protecting their own sexual health. The latest scientific findings have shown that people on HIV treatment who have an undetectable viral load and no other sexually transmitted infections are not infectious. Such people may want to have consensual unprotected sex. Criminalizing them for doing so has no positive public health impact and is an intrusion into their private life. UNAIDS is calling for the repeal of all laws that criminalize non-intentional HIV transmission, non-disclosure or exposure.

How and why was decriminalization of HIV transmission and exposure introduced in parliament?

In 2007, the Swiss Government decided to revise the Swiss law on epidemics. This was not an HIV-specific law and the decision to review it was not HIV-related but due to concerns that Switzerland was not well-placed to deal with other global epidemics, such as severe acute respiration syndrome (SARS) and H1N1. However, HIV campaigners and persons working in public health saw an opportunity to insert a clause into the Act that would amend Switzerland’s current Penal Code, Article 231 of which has been used to prosecute people living with HIV for transmission and exposure. Since 1989, there have been 39 prosecutions and 26 convictions under Article 231 in combination with the Swiss law on “grievous bodily harm”.

In December 2007, the government began a consultation on a draft Epidemics Bill and campaigners proposed a clause in it amending Article 231 of the Penal Code. In 2010, the government introduced the draft Bill into parliament. However, HIV campaigners were not happy with the new Bill as tabled and campaigned for changes throughout its passage through parliament. Improvements to the Bill were made at the Committee stage but it was not until the final vote at the National Council in 2013 that a last-minute amendment was tabled by Green MP Alec von Graffenried, which achieved campaigners’ core aim of decriminalizing unintentional transmission or exposure.

Was cross-party support secured and, if so, how? How was a majority vote secured?

The last-minute amendment was tabled and passed with 116 votes to 40. The key arguments made in favour of the amendment centred on the unsuitability of public health law to deal with private criminal matters. This rather theoretical argument appealed to legislators, many of whom are practising lawyers or have a legal background. However, the wider case for decriminalization had been made to parliamentarians over a period of many years inside and outside parliament and was reinforced by new sci- entific announcements and court decisions. MPs across the political divide realized that HIV is no longer a death sentence, but a manageable condition and that the right treatment can reduce an individual’s infectiousness to zero. In this context, MPs were more open to the idea of legal change.

During the campaigning period of many years, different arguments were made to appeal to different MPs across the political spectrum. Those on the right often responded best to the notion of an individual’s responsibility to protect their own sexual health and those on the left responded better to public health arguments. Efforts were also made to lobby the head of health departments at the regional level, who were then able to communicate their support for the change to colleagues at the national level.

How long did it take to pass the law?

It took almost six years from the consultation on the first draft of the Bill until it was confirmed by referendum in September 2013. The law will come into effect in January 2016.

 

Read and/or download the entire publication below.

Effective Laws to End HIV and AIDS: Next Steps for Parliaments. Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2013

Global Commission on HIV and the Law Jan 2014 newsletter highlights important legal and policy developments as well as new resources

We are pleased to share this first Newsletter Issue of 2014 containing several important developments. Perhaps most significantly, there have been a number of controversial recent anti-LGBT rulings and legislation around the world. In the same week in December, both Nigeria and Uganda adopted harsh new anti-LGBT related laws, which no doubt will have repercussions on the HIV response in those countries. Also, in December in response to the Supreme Court of India’s overruling of an earlier lower court decision to strike down an anti-sodomy law, effectively recriminalizing same sex behavior, former Commissioners of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law jointly issued a statement expressing dismay at the decision of the country’s top court. On a more positive note, in October Uzbekistan lifted all restrictions on entry, stay and residence for people living with HIV – see this UNAIDS infographic on current travel restrictions for PLHIV.

Several national and local level dialogues on HIV, human rights and the law were held in recent months, including in Brazil (November), China (December), Democratic Republic of Congo (November), and Dominican Republic (June). On 28-31 October, the first Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Judicial Dialogue on HIV and the Law was held in Nairobi. Also in October, UNDP and UNAIDS organized an information session on access to affordable medicines in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, attended by more than 30 parliamentarians. Visit our recently updated interactive map for more information on efforts by UN agencies, including UNDP and UNAIDS, in partnership with governments, civil society and international donors, to support countries in creating enabling legal environments for HIV responses and advance the findings and recommendations of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law.

A number of key knowledge products were published this past quarter, such as: Judging the epidemic: A judicial handbook on HIV, human rights and the law (UNAIDS, 2014); Protecting the rights of key HIV-affected women and girls in health care settings: A legal scan (UNDP, SAARCLAW, WAP+, 2013); HIV and human rights manual for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (French) (UNDP, 2013); Young people and the Law in Asia and the Pacific: A review of laws and policies affecting young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health and HIV services (UNESCO, UNFPA, UNAIDS, UNDP, Youth Lead, 2013); and Compendium of Judgments for Judicial Dialogue on HIV, Human Rights and the Law in Eastern and Southern Africa (UNDP, 2013).

Guyana: New law protects people with HIV against discrimination in the workplace

Legislative changes now protect persons living with HIV against discrimination in the workplace, and it is mandatory for employers with more than five regular employees on staff to develop a written policy on HIV and AIDS.

The law forms part of the regulations which will accompany the Occupational Health and Safety Act and is intended to prevent the spread of HIV in the workplace and also stem the associated stigma and discrimination.

HIV testing is not a precondition to employment and no employer is allowed to ask any person whether directly or indirectly about their HIV status.

Ghana: New supportive, human rights-focused HIV law expected to pass soon

The Ghana AIDS Commission and its partners have drafted a new legal framework, HIV and the Law which is expected to be passed into law soon.  According to Ghana AIDS Commission’s Abu Mahama, the legal framework is to address issues bordering on HIV/AIDS and human rights, and it is also expected to protect those living with HIV/AIDS as well as those affected by the disease.

He said the Commission is also putting together a Stigma and Discrimination Strategy to reduce stigma and discrimination against People Living with HIV (PWHIV) in the country. Mr. Mahama further stated that the Ghana AIDS Commission is providing funds to government health facilities that provide Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) services to register PLHIV for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).