DT News - UK - UK to remove ban on HIV-positive dental personnel

Dental Tribune International

Thu. 15 August 2013

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LONDON, UK: Yesterday, the UK Department of Health announced that it will be modernising the HIV rules that were implemented in the 1980s to protect the public better. Part of the plan is to allow doctors, nurses and other skilled health care workers with HIV who are undergoing treatment to perform certain medical procedures from which they are currently banned.

Following independent scientific advice, the department will lift the ban on health care workers with HIV being able to carry out certain dental and surgical procedures from April 2014. However, strict rules on treatment, monitoring and testing will be implemented as well to safeguard patients.

With this reform, UK authorities aim to bring the country in line with other nations, such as Sweden, France, Canada and New Zealand. Based on case-by-case decisions, HIV-infected dentists may be allowed to carry out procedures if they are on effective combination antiretroviral drug therapy, have an undetectable viral load and are regularly monitored by a physician.

The department is now planning to establish a programme to register and monitor health care workers who have HIV.

According to the department, there is no record of any patient ever being infected through a health care worker in the UK. There have been only four cases worldwide. In 1992, a dentist in Florida in the USA transmitted HIV to six patients. In 1999, a French orthopaedic surgeon transmitted the virus to one patient. A woman was infected during a Caesarean section by a Spanish gynaecologist in 2003. An additional case was reported in 2000, when a nurse in France transmitted HIV to a patient. However, the exact route of transmission is unclear in this case.

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