The news that one in four social workers, home care assistants and councillors do not want contact with AIDS patients, and that more than half want the right to refuse, is shocking. An extraordinary 88 per cent of those interviewed in a study of AIDS knowledge among social service providers said they had insufficient skills to help sufferers of the disease. It is as if all the research into AIDS and its means of transmission published over the past decade has passed Hong Kong by, leaving the community prey to the most primitive fears and prejudices.
Yet this is not some backward society where communications are poor, education levels low and information at a premium. These workers have been bombarded with a barrage of information from Government, the media, their own professional organisations, AIDS Concern and other non-governmental organisations. They have been told time and time again that they cannot get the disease simply by coming into contact with a person infected with HIV, or even by contact with a patient suffering from full-blown AIDS.
They have either been given basic advice in how to handle AIDS patients or, at least, had access to counselling if they were inclined to ask for it. Yet they have either chosen to ignore the information or, perhaps worse, have been unconvinced by it.
The first question this ignorance arouses, therefore, is about the quality of the workers themselves. The reaction of Council of Social Service director Hui Yin-fat, was to say that workers had no right to refuse service to AIDS patients and for them to get out of the business of care-giving if they did not want to help all their clients. That might sound harsh from a provisional legislator whose entire constituency is made up of social service workers. But it is an understandable attitude for someone who believes the client comes first and that patients have a right to treatment, care and understanding whatever their symptoms. There can be no place in a modern social services sector for prejudice and discrimination.
But there are further areas of uncertainty which require more probing research. What has been the quality of the information given to workers in the field? Quantity there has certainly been, but has there been the necessary attention to detail in answering questions and setting workers' fears to rest? Is there a relationship of trust between workers in the field and the professional organisations to which they belong? Could there be social workers and health care workers who actually believe they are being deliberately misled? Why would they draw such conclusions? Have there been similar instances in the past when they have been bamboozled into handling dangerous cases without the necessary precautions? What of the workers, mainly volunteers, attached to these groups (such as local Kaifong associations) which have moved into the political spotlight because of the controversy over their membership of the social work functional constituency? How many such people delivering welfare services on a voluntary basis or through charitable organisations are properly trained? How many have had any training at all? What further steps are being taken to deliver training and education for volunteer social workers and care-givers? These are questions that need to be examined carefully. Mr Hui's attitude is certainly correct when applied to professionals with information at their fingertips. It is remarkable that even among so-called frontline workers, researchers regard it as positive that 'only' 25.1 per cent are now unwilling to work with AIDS patients compared to 55 per cent in 1994. Perhaps the message to such workers should indeed be shape up or ship out.
But such brutality may be missing the point among ancillary workers, for instance, volunteers or groups with only occasional contact with sick people. Youth workers, for instance, may have had little contact with AIDS patients or training to deal with them. Yet they have to be particularly sensitive to the needs of their charges, who will not have been infected through any risk-taking of their own and are too young to understand, or cope with, the unwarranted social ostracism to which they are condemned.
