All new prison inmates in Estonia will be subject to a compulsory test for the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, in order to prevent an outbreak in the country's overcrowded prisons, officials said Wednesday.
The tests for HIV are mandated by a justice ministry decree that took force on January 1, justice ministry prisons specialist Peeter Krall told AFP.
"We need to step up the level of medical examinations of new inmates because of the explosion in the number of those affected by HIV in Estonia over the past year," Krall said.
There is no law in Estonia instituting mandatory testing for HIV.
A draft law on contagious diseases, passed by the government Tuesday, will not introduce compulsory tests for HIV for any category of people, a spokeswoman for the social affairs ministry told AFP.
Justice ministry officials say the ministerial decree on HIV tests is a measure to prevent outbreaks of the virus in the prisons, and is also in tune with what the prisoners want.
"Prisoners themselves are keen to be tested (for HIV), because they are afraid of AIDS," Krall said.
"For financial reasons, we cannot do so much testing as the inmates would like to have."
Krall said the justice ministry has no information about inmates who have refused to take an HIV test.
"Some have refused when they have been subjected to a test for drug use, which is a criminal offence, but not for HIV," Krall said.
He added Estonia's prisons are so overcrowded that any measure aimed at curbing a possible disease outbreak is valid.
"The countries in Europe where compulsory HIV testing for prisoners is not accepted have a completely different prison situation from us," Krall said -- TALLINN (AFP)
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