A.I.D.S. no great risk’ to health staff

Press, 17 May 1989, Page 9

A.I.D.S. no great risk’ to health staff

By

SARAH SANDS

in Wellington

Health care workers are not at great risk of catching A.LD.S. from their patients, a national conference and workshop on A.LD.S. was told yesterday.

Dr Deborah Mariott, a physician in the A.LD.S. unit at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, said that less than one in 200 health workers who had an incident exposing them to the A.LD.S. virus developed H.I.V. antibodies.

Comments made recently by an orthopaedic surgeon at the San Francisco General Hospital, Dr Lorraine Day, that H.I.V. was “highly contagious” and health workers were at “grave risk” were fiction, said Dr Marriott. "What we have is an orthopaedic surgeon talking about microbiology. I don’t presume to tell an orthopadedic surgeon how to replace a hip so I don’t know how she can presume to tell us about microbiology,” she said. Educating health workers and the public with the truth about H.I.V. infection and A.LD.S. was difficult when the news media put sensational comments on the front page “and a conference like this makes page three,” said Dr Marriott. The two-day conference, which finished yesterday, was held to dis-

cuss a draft policy document, “The H.1.V.-A.I.D.S. Epidemic: Towards a New Zealand Strategy," produced by the National Council on A.LD.S. Dr Marriott told the conference that only one study on the H.I.V. infection among health workers had been published so far.

The study outlined 22 cases of infection and showed that in 19 cases, health workers had known that they were dealing with H.1.V.-in-fected material. “This shows that unilateral testing of all patients for H.I.V. would serve no useful purpose as knowing that someone is infected does not stop health care workers having accidents,” Dr Mariott said.

Of the 22 health staff infected with H.1.V., 14 had received the virus through a penetrating injury, either a scalpel blade or a deep needlestick, she said. Four had contracted the virus when broken skin had touched H.1.V.-contaminated body fluids.

A group in the United

States recording incidences of health workers exposing themselves to H.I.V. had recorded 1201 instances since the group was established in August, 1983, said Dr Marriott. Only four people (0.45 per cent) had developed H.I.V. antibodies.

Of those exposed, 62.5 per cent were nurses, 13.7 per cent were physicians and medical students, 11.2 per cent were laboratory workers, 7.5 per cent were blood collectors, 3 per cent were respiratory therapists, and 2.1 per cent were housekeeping staff, she said.

“The vast majority of those exposed are the people making the least noise about this — the nurses,” Dr Mariott said.

The large number exposed via needle-stick injury showed that resheathing needles was a needless practice that should be outlawed in every hospital. H.I.V. and A.LD.S. reinforced the need for health care workers to be meticulous about infection control procedures, she said.