Younger siblings everywhere need to be protected from such unfair admission rules. The risk of transmitting HIV to their unborn baby is rarely considered a priority. Like most sexually active adults, they assume this is a disease caught by someone else. So it is a bold move by the Government to suggest all pregnant women should be offered a test for the virus. When 50 babies a year are currently being infected during childbirth, anything which reduces this figure must be welcomed.
Most women choose to have scans to check for abnormalities in the foetus as a matter of course.
Yet even in high-risk areas, where an HIV test is already available, only 30 per cent of women take up the offer. The fear and stigma still attached to AIDS clearly puts many off. To learn one is HIV positive must be devastating and the right counselling and treatment facilities will have to be on hand for any woman found to be so. But it must be even worse for a parent to know they have also unnecessarily infected their child. The more women who take this voluntary HIV test the less will be the stigma.