The police cannot make you have an HIV antibody test. Within the terms of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984, you are entirely within your rights to refuse any pressure from the police to take an HIV antibody test, at a police station or anywhere else at all.

However, there have been reports that pressure has been put on some individuals in some police stations to persuade them to be tested as a condition of earlier release.

As in any other workplace situation, there is no risk whatsoever of HIV transmission, except through unsafe sex or sharing needles. And any other anxieties individual police officers may have are evidence of their need for better HIV/AIDS education.