HIV-test fugitives held in Australia

The High Court ordered the test be carried out

A father on the run from Britain after refusing to allow his daughter to have an HIV test has been detained by Australian police.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, fled the UK in 1999 with his then four-month old daughter.

Father and daughter have now been separated by the Australian equivalent of social services and on Thursday, will attempt to gain custody in court.

The 39-year-old was on the brink of actually returning to the UK - where he claims the authorities would be more sympathetic to him, despite his defiance of a High Court order.

The British court had ordered the baby girl to be tested for HIV after her mother was diagnosed with the infection.

However, the family - proponents of alternative medicine - refused, claiming that conventional antiretroviral treatments were highly toxic and would damage their daughter.

They have been living quietly in Victoria in Australia for more than two years on a visitor's visa.

However, they were discovered when the girl's mother became ill and died in October last year of a condition which her partner says was unrelated to HIV.

Test carried out

Following the mother's death, the daughter - now three years old - was finally tested for HIV, and discovered to be carrying the virus.

At this point an Australian court ordered her to be held temporarily at the hospital while court proceedings started to compel her to receive antiretroviral treatment.

The father resisted these legal moves, and on Saturday travelled to Sydney in preparation for catching a flight back to the UK.

However, this violated a care order banning him from leaving the state of Victoria, and police apprehended him in Sydney on Tuesday, moving his daughter to foster care and threatening him with arrest.

If successful, the Australian social services' court action could mean that the three-year-old receives antiretroviral treatment, which her father says is completely unwarranted.

50-50 chance

According to the Auistralian newspaper, the child was tested on the day her mother died by a paediatrician.

He said that she had suffered neurological, immunological and intellectual damage - and said she had a 50-50 chance of living another year without antiretroviral treatment - a claim strongly disputed by the father.

UK High Court Judge Justice Nicholas Wilson ruled in September 1999 that the child should be tested.

The court had been told that, despite advice that breastfeeding could increase the chance of HIV transmission, the mother had continued to do so.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that his department was looking into the matter.