A Taiwanese legislator said on Sunday that she will introduce legislation intended to require HIV-positive people to voluntarily reveal their AIDS con... A Taiwanese legislator said on Sunday that she will introduce legislation intended to require HIV-positive people to voluntarily reveal their AIDS condition to emergency medical responders.

TAIPEI (Taiwan)--A Taiwanese legislator said on Sunday that she will introduce legislation intended to require HIV-positive people to reveal their AIDS condition to emergency medical responders after a recent incident in eastern Taiwan caused a scare.

There were recent news reports about a fire department emergency medical technician in Hualien whose wound allegedly came into contact with the blood of a patient the EMT was attending to. The technician later learned from the hospital treating the patient that the patient is HIV positive. The technician subsequently suffered from great panic and anxiety and reportedly spent more than NT$20,000 on treatment as prevention for HIV.

People First Party (PFP) Legislator Chen Yi-chieh (陳怡潔) said she will introduce a bill intended to make revelation of HIV-infected people’s AIDS condition to emergency medical responders (EMRs) mandatory to protect the welfare of EMRs. At the same time, the bill is also intended to require that EMRs cannot refuse to attend to the patients upon knowing about their AIDS condition, she added.

After controversies regarding whether HIV-infected people should reveal their such condition to EMRs stemming from the Hualien incident broke out, Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) issued a document that said patients do not have to notify EMRs of their AIDS condition because EMRs are not medical personnel, which enraged the entire fire department personnel in Taiwan. They argued that the MHW’s statement is in essence saying that EMRs’ lives are less valuable than those of medical personnel.

Chen said that the MHW’s statement exposed the agency’s selfish departmentalism as well as the insufficiency of the current laws to protect the country’s emergency medical services personnel. She said she intends to introduce the bill to give the EMRs who are usually exposed to high risk environments the equal right and equal protection as awarded to medical personnel.