'No need to give HIV status in safe sex'

09 April 2014 - 02:01 By Denise Williams and Katharine Child
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JOURNEY: Justice Edwin Cameron at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg
JOURNEY: Justice Edwin Cameron at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg
Image: THYS DULLAART

Constitutional Court justice Edwin Cameron yesterday said he felt there was no need for HIV-infected people to disclose their status to their partner if they practised safe sex.

Speaking to the Cape Town Press Club about his new book, Justice: A personal account, Cameron said: "If you use [a condom] for safe consensual sex there's no obligation to disclose HIV status ... If you're practising safe sex there's no risk ... Is anything 100%? It's pretty near to 100%; it's very hard to transmit HIV really."

He said this was not a controversial issue and that for too long people with HIV had been stigmatised and branded.

"If you do not engage in risk- taking or risk-exposing sexual behaviour, there's no need to state your HIV status," he said.

Cameron, a former human rights lawyer, judge of the High Court and of the Supreme Court of Appeal, publicly disclosed he had HIV in 1999 ahead of his appointment to the Constitutional Court.

Anova Health's Dr Kevin Rebe, who treats HIV-positive gay men, agreed with the judge's view.

"The thinking now is for people to ensure that they don't pass on HIV to partners."

Rebe said a new study had shown that a person on antiretrovirals treatment for a few months whose viral load had become undetectable could not pass on the virus.

An undetectable viral load means the virus is not reproducing and is effectively dormant.

Gender expert and researcher at Wits Wiser Institute Lisa Vetten said that condom use was not without complications because condoms could burst and sometimes came off.

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