Criminal case following disclosure of HIV/AIDS status

A civic group has initiated criminal proceedings against a health official in Kyrgyzstan for allegedly disclosing the status of a person living with HIV/AIDS in the first case of its kind in the country. The man who brought the complaint has since died of an AIDS-related condition. HIV/AIDS rates continue to rise in the Central Asian state, with intravenous drug users accounting for most of the increase. “The chief doctor of the provincial AIDS centre in [the southern Kyrgyz city of] Jalal-Abad gave a televised interview to a local television channel, in which the face of the HIV-infected person was shown,” Erik Iriskulbekov from the local Adilet legal clinic, said in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on Monday. The man in question, from one of the villages near Jalal-Abad, was undergoing out-patient treatment at the AIDS centre. “As a result, many people got to know that the person was HIV positive,” added Iriskulbekov, who works on a project on the protection of rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and vulnerable groups. There are some 860 registered cases of HIV/AIDS in the country, according to the Kyrgyz AIDS centre, with the majority of them in the south. The main mode of transmission - some 80 percent of all registered cases – is through injecting drug use, the centre said, adding that almost 50 people had died since 1996 because of AIDS. According to Kyrgyz law, disclosing someone’s HIV/AIDS status is illegal. “The disclosure of the status of the person not only affected his health; as a result of it his friends turned their backs on him, his children aged 10 and 12 years old were teased by other children and they were subject to persecution and discrimination,” Iriskulbekov maintained. The patient applied to Adilet legal clinic for legal assistance, but later died from heart failure triggered by depression and refusal to continue HIV/AIDS treatment, said his family. “Before his death, he wrote a statement in which he blamed the chief doctor of Jalal-Abad provincial AIDS centre and gave a statement to us,” Iriskulbekov continued. The statement read: “Dr Ismailov, head of the centre, mentioned my HIV status in his interview and my image was shown on television. After that my children and I started having problems.” The head of the AIDS centre denied the charges against him. “I neither provided any information nor was involved in disseminating information about the HIV-infected patient. I am well aware of the law on a doctor’s oath of confidentiality,” the Kyrgyz AKIpress-Ferghana news agency quoted Ismailov as saying. The AKIpress-Ferghana report also said that according to journalists who broadcast the report, the image of the patient was not clearly shown. The case underscores the plight of people living with HIV/AIDS in the former Soviet republic and the stigma attached to the disease. Some people who are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS even consider committing suicide as the pressure and burden of living with HIV/AIDS is hard to bear in this largely traditional society, officials told IRIN earlier.