and staff moving to high-exposure practice. The latter includes “junior doctors entering surgical specialities, qualified nurses wishing to train as midwives and post-registration nurses moving into work in operating theatres and A&E for the first time”.
All new NHS workers, including medical students, will be tested for TB, and Hep C and HIV tests are strongly ‘suggested’. In an accompanying letter, Chief Medical Officer Dr Liam Donaldson said: “The new draft proposals are not intended to prevent those infected with bloodborne viruses from working in the NHS, but to restrict them from working in those clinical areas where their infection may pose a risk to patients.”*
Over the winter months there has been renewed pressure for compulsory HIV testing of new NHS workers as well as new immigrants to Britain.
Each year over 18,000 new healthcare workers are recruited into the NHS and last year over 2,000 nurses were recruited from South Africa where the HIV infection rate is over 20 per cent.
Public Health minister Hazel Blears has, however, firmly rejected selective or compulsory testing of other immigrants.
“We don’t want to drive people underground,” she told Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme: “We want to make sure that we can provide support and treatments.”
* The new draft guidelines can be downloaded from: www.doh.gov.uk/healthclear