The rules on HIV infection to change? wellness hotel proposes shorter penalties for exposure

The Ministry of wellness proposed that the Ministry of Justice amend the provision on HIV exposure. He wants a general evidence of the vulnerability to infection, including infectious disease. According to the Ministry, the specification of this dangerous illness is ‘stigmatising’ and ‘injuring’. In the meantime, evidence numbers of transmission of this virus were recorded last year. Among another things, she is favored by homosexual activity. The vulnerability to possibly contagious activities would besides be subject to milder penalties according to the imagination of the wellness department.

Currently, Article 161 of the Criminal Code reads: “Who, knowing that he is infected with HIV, or is infected with a venereal or infectious disease, a severe incurable or life-threatening disease, straight exposes another individual to infection or specified disease, is sentenced to imprisonment from 3 months to 5 years”.

According to Anna Marzec-Bogusławska, head of the National Centre for AIDS, an institution subordinate to the Ministry of Health, the provision should be modified. – There is no reason for HIV infection to be the only 1 isolated in this article – it is stigmatizing and hurtful. It is adequate for them to be subject to a general regulation of conscious vulnerability to infectious disease. Combating stigma is simply a precedence for many HIV support programmes, including internationally – said a female in the beginning of December in a conversation with PAP. She added that these recommendations were sent to the Ministry of Justice.

The wellness department's proposal was addressed to the Criminal Law Codification Commission at the Minister of Justice in February this year. It proposes to mitigate the punishment and adapt it to the "up-to-date medical knowledge" of HIV/AIDS and legal knowledge.

The MZ proposed a fresh text in Article 161: "Who, knowing that he is affected by a venereal or infectious disease, severe incurable or life-threatening disease, straight exposes another individual to infection with the virus or specified disease, is subject to imprisonment from 3 months to 3 years".

This means that, in addition to removing HIV from the recipe, the ministry besides calls for a simplification of the maximum punishment to its first version, i.e. a departure from 5 to 3 years.

According to MZ, the current punishment dimension is much more than was originally the case in the 1990s. "With medical knowledge, the availability of measures to prevent infections, the cognition of the general public about HIV/AIDS and ways to prevent infection, and the availability, quality and effectiveness of end-20 antiretroviral treatment and are presently incomparable", explained the Ministry of Justice in a letter to the Ministry of Justice.

The MZ besides proposed to alleviate the conviction of paragraph 3 of that article for up to 5 years, which presently provides for imprisonment from 1 to 10 years in the event of vulnerability to multiple persons.

Such a ministry justified the uncommon uncovering of guilt under these regulations... According to police statistics, the number of HIV, infectious or venereal disease-related offences detected (Article 161 paragraphs 1-2) between 1999 and 2020 did not exceed 20 in any year and averaged 13 per year.

– specified actions may be prosecuted under another general legislation, which makes it unnecessary to preserve existing or make additional rules on HIV alone said MZ.

According to HIV Justice Network NGO data, presently criminal laws mention HIV in 75 countries, in 3 parts of the world: the United States, east Europe/Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

What may be peculiarly crucial for the ministry “only a fewer associate States in the European Union have introduced government specifically concerning HIV vulnerability or transmission. Denmark, which in 2001 introduced criminal records as the only country in Western Europe, suspended them 10 years later. Romania and Latvia have besides adopted criminal rules on HIV, but crime rates are very low."

In the opinion of the Codification Committee on Criminal Law at the Minister of Justice, a number of concerns about this proposal, including the deficiency of consistency, were raised to the MZ's request. At the same time, it was stated that the request that the provision should no longer contain the word "HIV virus" – but, in keeping with the current scope of criminalisation – is "unquestionably worthy of consideration".

PAP asked the Ministry of Justice about a possible amendment of the provision.

The Ministry does not carry out specified work – the answer was.

"However, the request of the National Centre for AIDS, between the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Health, is being exchanged in correspondence and opinion on any possible changes in Article 161(1) and (3). Only after these findings have been completed will it be possible to find whether the provision will be amended in the scope described by the National Centre for AIDS," added the MS Press Department.

The ministerial proposal to mitigate the punishment for vulnerability to HIV is, in the meantime, consistent with the evidence increase in its detection in Poland. In 2023, an exceptionally large number of HIV infections were diagnosed – 2879, more than twice as much as the yearly data from a decade ago.

According to the National Institute of Public Health, 322 people were banned in Poland in 2023 as a consequence of homosexual contacts and 214 as a consequence of heterosexual contacts. Additionally, 36 reported an infection by taking drugs in injections, and 25 by vertical infections, or mother-child. The majority of people with HIV infection were included in the group “no data on the origin of infection”.

Currently, thanks to the advances of medicine, if a individual surviving with HIV is regularly taking antiretroviral medicines and for six months has an undetectable viraemia (a condition defined as a presence in the blood that can multiply viruses) does not carry the disease.

HIV is simply a human immunodeficiency virus. The infection may be asymptomatic for many years, which makes it very hard to diagnose. For up to 8–10 years it may not give any symptoms, but at this time the virus is constantly multiplying and destroying the immunity of the infected person. It can origin acquired immunodeficiency syndrome – AIDS.

(PAP)/work. FA