HIV cheat said to be in New Zealand

By CATHERINE MASTERS

An HIV-positive Ghanaian man at the centre of a landmark court case in Australia is believed to be in New Zealand.

The man covered up his condition from his Australian wife who went on to contract the disease.

The mother of two is suing staff at the Sydney clinic where the pair went for HIV testing before their marriage, saying doctors should have told her his test was positive.

The man had apparently showed his then fiance a fake negative test result. Australian newspaper reports say the Supreme Court in Sydney heard that doctors had urged him to tell his partner and to go for an appointment at an HIV unit.

The marriage ended and the woman lost contact with him when he moved to New Zealand.

Authorities here say they are not aware if the man is in the country and are unsure if he should be considered a risk - but doctors and Aids experts say the case is a warning for people to always use condoms with new sexual partners and with partners they are unsure of.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, however, is outraged that people from countries where Aids is widespread, such as Africa, are not checked for the condition before they are allowed into the country.

He likened the case to that of Kenyan musician Peter Mwai, who was jailed in 1994 for causing grievous bodily harm to a woman he infected with HIV and for four counts of criminal nuisance relating to four other women he slept with but did not tell he had the virus.

Mwai was later deported and died in Uganda.

"The real issue is this: why on Earth weren't these people medically checked when they came here?" said Mr Peters.

"I mean, this is gross dereliction of duty on the part of the Minister of Health ...

"What has happened to him? Has he formed other relationships? Are there other people that have been given a death sentence here?"

The Minister of Health, Annette King, said it was a kneejerk reaction from Mr Peters.

"Is he saying we need to do HIV tests on the three million visitors to New Zealand each year?" she said.

Warren Lindberg, former director of the Aids Foundation, said the World Health Organisation had repeatedly said it was impossible to stop HIV by identifying population groups and stopping them at borders.

The message from the case was that sexual relationships were not always safe, he said.

"People need to be extremely wary and they need to be sure that the relationship they have with a partner is one of absolute openness."

The Immigration Service could not confirm if the Ghanaian man was in the country. A spokesman said if he was a Ghanaian citizen he would have had to apply for a visitor's visa but there was nothing in the application form requiring him to divulge an HIV/Aids condition.

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