The Education Blog

The South Carolina government wants schools to continue to get HIV notifications, reckoning that the step to stop notifying schools of positive HIV results among school kids is a wrong step to take. Governor Mark Sanford has claimed that schools should continue to be notified when students test positive for HIV.

WIS News 10 reports that the governor has also said that there should be more notification of what he called highly contagious diseases rather than less.

Sanford says he’s a strong privacy rights advocate but that as a parent he’d want to know if child’s classmate or teammate had Hepatitis C.

According to The Beaufort Gazette, this information will be gathered in school health care centers and will allow a school nurse to act more quickly when there is an accident involving students.

Gov. Mark Sanford issued the veto Wednesday night, saying federal privacy laws are flawed and that ending notification to school superintendents and nurses is a step in the wrong direction.

Stanford is quoted commenting on the importance of keeping such information public.

“We believe that as a matter of public policy that more highly contagious diseases should be added to this notification list rather than deleted. Instead, this bill would move in the opposite direction by removing what many consider to be a very deadly disease. If my son or daughter was sitting in class or was on the sporting field with a fellow student who happened to have Hepatitis C, as a parent I would want to know,” Stanford said.

Photo: © lumierefl

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