With no confirmation coming from state governments or the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) on the need for such tests, patients in most private hospitals in need of surgery are now being asked to take the HIV test.

Some organisations, like Joint Action Council of Kannur an NGO here, have criticised the practice, saying it legitimises AIDS paranoia. But doctors in the Capital call it a ``necessary precaution''.

Even the Delhi Health Minister A.K. Walia vouches for the tests, he says they should also be made mandatory in government hospitals. He said he would ask NACO and the Union Health Ministry to do the needful. But NACO chief J.V.R. Prasada Rao said he could never agree to something like that and puts forward another reasoning.

``Doctors are afraid they will get infected, but don't they know that the risk of infection from diseases like Hepatitis C and B is also high,'' he said. The tests should not be allowed in government hospitals unless it is symptomatically required by a particular patient, he stressed.

According to Joint Action Council, both NACO and World Health Organisation guidelines say that a doctor need take only basic precautions in treating a patient with AIDS. ``The precautions are as ordinary as wearing gloves, sterilising them and destroying used syringes. Besides HIV is a weaker virus which cannot survive in temperatures beyond 20 degrees Celsius,'' council spokesman Purushothaman Mulloli said.

Meanwhile, pregnant women and their husbands are shelling out around Rs 1,000 on the tests. One test costs around Rs 500. Sonal and Sanjay (names changed) had to go through the test in Moolchand Hospital after Sonal's doctor Sadhna Kala told them they needed to get one done. ``I found it outrageous, but we had no choice,'' says Sanjay.

Shobha who is three-months pregnant says she had to spend Rs 4,000 for a series of tests which included HIV. Her husband also took the test at a clinic in East of Kailash. According to Dr Urvashi Jha, gynaecological cancer surgeon in Apollo Hospital, HIV tests are being done on all her patients as well on their husbands. She cites reasons like high incidence of the disease and the risk that the disease may be transmitted to the unborn child. Then Dr Jha goes on to the sticky issue of doctors and their rights when it comes to treating AIDS patients. She says: ``The doctor needs to know whether or not her patient has AIDS. Not just to take precautions to protect himself but also to prevent infection of other patients,'' she says.

Sunil Chumbal, laproscopic surgeon at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) cites the example of two doctors in King George's Hospital in Lucknow where two surgeons contracted the HIV virus while operating on an AIDS patient. ``A doctor has the right to refuse a patient unless it is a life-saving event,'' says Dr Jha. As for the rights of the AIDS patient himself, says Dr Chumbal, no hospital would disclose the fact to the world. But in the case of an AIDS patient in a Delhi government hospital recently, the patient's bed carried a board identifying him as having AIDS.

``Private clinics are not within our control,'' says Rao. ``But for doctors in government hospitals, we will continue to train them to change their attitudes regarding AIDS,'' he said.