HIV and Employment

Protection under the Equality Act is from the point of diagnosis, and not from the day that you tell your employer.  Employers cannot ask questions about your health until an offer of employment has been made.  Once this happens, then the employer can ask questions, but this should not be used to treat you unfairly.  It is very important to answer a health questionnaire honestly because if your employer finds out about something at a later date it could be seen as a breach of trust and this could have implications for your employment.  The Data Protection Act 1998 states that records of your HIV status must be kept confidential.

There has also been a change in the law where people who work in medicine and perform ‘exposure-prone procedures’ such as dentistry, surgery, midwifery etc. can now undertake these jobs.  It is necessary that these professionals are on treatments, have a viral load of fewer than 200 copies per millilitre of blood, have three-monthly viral load tests and be registered with the UKAP Occupational Health Monitoring Register.