PARTNER NOTIFICATION FOR HIV-INFECTION IN DENMARK - ATTITUDES AND PRELIMINARY-RESULTS

Objectives: To examine attitudes, experience and preliminary results o f partner notification (PN) for HIV infection in Denmark among the doc tors who inform one of their patients about being HIV infected. Method : The doctors who had reported to the national HIV surveillance unit a bout a new-identified HIV infected person, during a 9 months period, w ere searched for one year later. The traced doctors were interviewed. The results of the interview related to 102 out of 195 (52%) reports w ere compared between the 48 interviewed general practitioners (GPs) an d the 33 interviewed hospital doctors (HDs). The proportion of traced reporting doctors were higher among GPs than among HDs. Results: Both GPs and HDs found it difficult to give a positive HIV test result and wanted trained counsellors to work with them in the PN process. Less e xperience and fewer post-graduate courses about HIV may explain the GP s' lack of confidence to follow-up asymptomatic HIV positive patients. It was neither a routine for all the GPs or for all HDs to ask about patient behaviour nor to discuss safe sex with their index patients, a nd screening for other sexually transmitted diseases were seldomly per formed. The numbers of partners notified, especially by the doctors we re low. Conclusions: HIV reporting doctors in Denmark are motivated fo r PN. Educational programmes about counselling and care of HIV infecte d patients should, however, be offered at intervals, especially to GPs . The outcome of PN can only be measured to a certain level as long as exposed partners are neither obliged to be tested nor to be counselle d and as long as information about counselling and testing can not be shared between doctors in different settings.