Letter

Confidentiality for workers and patients

Dear healthmatters — There is no need for the hysteria being whipped up by the media against health workers who have HIV. There is no recorded evidence of transmission from health worker to patient in this country.

Such hysteria has only led to calls for compulsory HIV testing or, worse, for criminalising HIV transmission. It simply drives HIV underground, deterring people from services. What does it offer people who have been tested and are positive? Their picture across every tabloid newspaper and TV news broadcast?

Having a test is not giving a cure. Being tested positive is not a crime.

We need a climate within our health services which allows workers who are concerned about their HIV status to discuss it with their managers without worrying that their personal life will be splashed across the national press. We need effective and accurate health education about HIV. We all need to know in everyday language the routes of transmission and the nature of the disease which is transmitted.

We then need an end to the public and media hysteria surrounding the issue and an end to the calls for compulsion and criminalisation. There must be management action in the NHS and in the medical professional associations to make the health service a confidential environment for its workers and patients alike.

The atmosphere generated by the climate of witch-hunting puts more people at risk than any HIV-positive health care worker ever can.