HIV contact tracing - client responsibilities

This fact sheet contains information on confidentiality and legal obligations for people who have been recently diagnosed with HIV.

Contact tracing is the process of contacting people who have been in contact with someone with an infectious condition and providing advice to protect their health and prevent further spread of the infection.

Queensland Health takes a lead role in managing public health. This means that among other things, it helps to prevent the spread of infectious conditions. Infectious conditions are those spread from person-to-person and include conditions such as COVID-19, measles, whooping cough, food-borne illness, viral hepatitis, blood-borne viruses (BBVs) and sexually transmissible infections (STIs) including HIV.

Notifiable conditions

To control the spread of infectious conditions, many conditions are notifiable under Queensland law. This means that the doctor or laboratory making the diagnosis is required to notify Queensland Health. This information is used to monitor disease trends and prevent the spread of diseases. Details of individuals are not used in reporting and the information received is managed confidentially according to relevant legislation and policies.

Preventing the spread of infectious conditions

Infectious conditions may be spread in different ways and therefore require different control measures. All control measures rely on attempting to identify both the source of the infection and the people who may have been exposed. Identifying and advising the contacts of a person known to have the infectious condition is known as contact tracing. Once the contacts are identified, advice, testing, medication or vaccinations may be offered.

How is HIV contact tracing done?

Your health practitioner can provide advice about your options to inform your contacts of any risk. You may choose to tell your contacts yourself, or you may choose to have your health practitioner contact them without identifying you in any way.

You will be asked to discuss the details of any HIV transmission risks because this will help you and your clinician to understand when you may have acquired HIV, and will help identify past and current contacts, including any sexual and/or injecting contacts, who may need to be advised to consider testing for HIV. Early testing, treatment and counselling offers benefits to the individual and the community.

Legal obligations

If you are HIV positive, you have a legal obligation to not place others at risk of infection.