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Health benefits and risks of reporting HIV-infected individuals by name.

G N Colfax and A B Bindman

San Francisco Department of Public Health, AIDS Office, CA 94102-6033, USA. grantvcolfax@dph.sf.ca.us

With more treatment options emerging for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, the policy of reporting HIV-infected individuals by name merits reevaluation. This paper reviews the benefits and risks of name reporting of persons infected with HIV. Public health departments have linked name reporting with medical referrals, risk reduction counseling, and partner notification programs. Yet some studies indicate that people are less likely to be tested for HIV infection when name reporting is implemented. Whether name reporting actually improves individual or public health, therefore justifying the increased risk of loss of confidentiality and possibly reduced testing rates, remains unknown. The lack of health outcome data on name reporting allows beliefs rather than facts to dominate debate about this policy. Before this practice is more widely adopted, a determination should be made as to whether the potential benefits of name reporting outweigh the risks.

Related articles in AJPH:

Name-based reporting of HIV infection.

P M Wortley, J S Lehman, and P L Fleming
AJPH 1999 89: 1271-1273. [PDF]  

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. H. Osmond, A. B. Bindman, K. Vranizan, J. S. Lehman, F. M. Hecht, D. Keane, A. Reingold, and for the Multistate Evaluation of Surveillance for Name-Based Surveillance and Public Health Interventions for Persons with HIV Infection Ann Intern Med, November 16, 1999; 131(10): 775 - 779. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]