Soldiers considered suspect

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 10

Soldiers considered suspect

NZPA-Reuter Copenhagen

Danish health authorities have forbidden blood banks to use soldiers as donors for fear of A.I.D.S. infection, a newspaper reported yesterday. “Soldiers are exposed to group pressure that increases the danger that homosexuals and others belonging to the risk groups will give blood,” a National Health Board doctor, Eva Hammer-

shoey, told “Berlingske Tidende.” "There is also a concentration of young men in the barracks of precisely the age when they start to go out and get up to fun and games. They can be infected without knowing it and this is also an increased risk we do not wish to run,” she said. Some Danish blood banks reacted angrily to the directive. “There is no

evidence for saying that the risk of getting A.1.D.5.infected blood from soldiers is higher than from other groups,” a doctor at one blood bank told the newspaper.

The World Health Organisation reported in September that Denmark had Europe’s third-highest incidence of A.I.D.S. — 13.3 per million inhabitants — after Switzerland and Belgium.