(AFP) The Malaysian AIDS Council has opposed a plan by the southern Johor state to carry out mandatory pre-marital HIV tests on Muslim couples.

The council feared the plan was not scientifically sound, lacked trained staff and could cause unnecessary distress for those with false positive results, president Marina Mahathir told The Sun newspaper.

"We find that many practical issues in the implementation of the fatwa (religious decree) have not been thought through by the Johor Health Department and this will cause the plan to fail," she said.

One of the objections was that there seemed little concern about the window period of several months between infection and testing positive, which would defeat the purpose of the pre-marital tests, she said.

Johor Chief Minister Abdul Ghani Othman had said the fatwa was made by the Johor Islamic Council to prevent HIV, which causes AIDS, being passed on to children. The decree is due to be implemented from Nov 13, which is World AIDS Day.

"Initially, there were some objections that the fatwa violated individial rights and that couples are denied their right to get married," Abdul Ghani said.

"After much explanation, these people who opposed us in the beginning have understood the ruling and started to support it."

Highest HIV infections

Abdul Ghani said there had been cases of couples being unaware they had the disease until their babies were born.

"We have to take the measure because Johor has recorded the highest number of HIV infections with 8,000 cases last year," he said.

Abdul Ghani said that most of the infected people were Muslims.

Under the Johor state fatwa, couples would be tested in state hospitals and then hand the results to the religious authority. If medically fit, they would be issued a certificate and could then get married.

If a test showed that a prospective bride or groom had HIV/AIDS, it would be up to them if they wanted to go on with their wedding as they could not be prevented from doing so.

Johor is the first among the 13 states in Malaysia to make such a ruling. Religious matters come under the jurisdiction of individual states.

Another state, Negri Sembilan, said today it had decided to follow Johor's ruling as the number of HIV patients was on the rise.

The New Straits Times newspaper cited a religious official as saying that about 4,000 men and 93 women in the state had tested positive for HIV.