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During National Smile Week this summer, the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) launched a campaign to highlight the rights of patients with HIV and the responsibilities of dentists. What THT found was that a lot of dentists were either unwilling to treat people with HIV or were treating them unfairly.
Horror stories abounded. Some people were refused treatment outright. Others were made to wait till the end of the day for 'extra sterilisation.

Illustration by Raffaele Teo

procedures'. Some dental practices put people with HIV at the bottom of the waiting list for treatment. Some clinics even daubed 'HIV' in large letters on the front of patient records. One person with HIV successfully sued a private dentist in London and won a four-figure sum in compensation.
Lisa Power, head of policy and campaigns at THT, said: "The Disability Discrimination Act states that it is illegal to discriminate against people who are ill through HIV. Despite this, 40 per cent of people who were questioned in a survey last year said that they'd experienced discrimination."
There are clear concerns on both sides. Some dentists fear that HIV positive people are potentially infectious. More realistic dentists assume every patient could be a possible risk, more likely from hepatitis than HIV, and therefore take standard hygiene precautions. However it is worth noting that there has yet to be a proven case of HIV transmission at a dentist's surgery in the UK.

From the patient's point of view, a visit to the dentist can conjure up feelings of fear and anxiety, as well as worries about receiving further stigma and discrimination for being HIV