Healthcare providers have an obligation to provide advice that is:
- consistent with any legal duty to provide information to a patient regarding precautions to prevent transmission
- based on best current scientific evidence
- tailored to the person’s individual health, treatment and social situation
- practical and specific in nature, including advice about access to condoms and other harm reduction methodologies (e.g. needle/syringe access or PrEP), and further information sources for support and education (e.g. peer organisations and other quality information sources).
It is also important that healthcare providers are aware of HIV-related criminal offences created by public health law, so that they may clearly advise their patients of their responsibilities or make a referral to an appropriate person who can provide this information.
While medical practitioners are not expected to be lawyers, all healthcare providers must understand their duties to advise patients of their responsibilities, particularly where these duties and responsibilities are imposed by law.
If a patient has a legal issue, medical practitioners should make it clear to the patient that they can provide general information only, which is not a substitute for the patient obtaining their own legal advice. Refer to the information and referral section for more information. State- and territory-based criminal offences created by public health legislation in relation to an HIV-positive patient’s obligations, and a practitioner’s obligation to provide information regarding reasonable precautions against transmission are listed at State-based obligations, in the following sections.
State-based obligations #
This section discusses public health laws relating to HIV-positive patients. It also discusses public health laws relating to healthcare providers’ responsibilities when diagnosing HIV in the 8 jurisdictions where specific laws exist: Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia.
The HIV/AIDS Legal Centre has HIV disclosure guides available online for the following jurisdictions:
- New South Wales
- South Australia
- Queensland
- Western Australia.
The disclosure guide for Victoria is currently under review and is expected to be available in 2025.
