Top HIV advisor calls for sackings

Damning evidence heard in the trial of a gay man accused of attempting to deliberately infect others with HIV has led to calls for Victoria’s chief health officer to be sacked.

The court heard chief health officer Dr Robert Hall did not act on reports from his own advisors alleging Michael John Neal was repeatedly attempting to pass HIV on to others over a six-year period.

At the time of the alleged offences, Neal was the subject of an order not to visit gay sex sites or engage in unsafe sex.

A spokesperson for Hall said the beleaguered chief health officer would not comment on the case as it was still before the courts.

Michael Wooldridge, chairperson of the federal Ministerial Advisory Committee on AIDS, Sexual Health and Hepatitis, called for Hall’s dismissal, and pointed to a wider failure among HIV prevention agencies in Victoria.

Everyone has failed, Wooldridge told The Age.

It’s not fair just to put it on the minister or government, to be honest. There is a complacency in Victoria that you don’t find in other states, he said.

It’s not surprising that if a catastrophe like this had to happen in Australia, it happened in Victoria.

Wooldridge also told The Age he believed the community health sector in Victoria was less urgent about rising HIV rates than those working in NSW.

Meanwhile a spokesperson for Victorian health minister Bronwyn Pike denied reports the minister had ordered health department officials to report HIV-positive people engaging in unprotected sex to the police.

The spokesperson said there was no change to the existing policy, whereby only Dr Hall could make such a notification.

The minister has simply directed DHS officials to discuss the existing protocols with the police to see if they need to be improved, he said.

But there is no telling where that process might lead. These are very complex issues.