fisher@dssdev.DEC (Gerry --- Hopelessly Obscure) (10/10/85)
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Update on AIDS and health care workers.
Still no signs of the virus spreading by casual contact. This is
a tough disease to spread.
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Reprinted without permission
from the Boston AIDS Action Committee newsletter, "AAC Lifelines"
October
"U.S. Says 2 Workers in Health Care Got AIDS Virus on Jobs"
Atlanta, Sept. 26 (AP)---
Federal health officials confirmed today that two health care workers
had been exposed to the AIDS virus, apparently after they accidentally
stuck themselves with needles that had been used to take blook samples
from AIDS patients.
The two health care workers, a nurse and a laboratory technician, have
not become ill, according to Dr. Ken Castro of the Federal Centers for
Disease Control. Officials at the centers said doctors, nurses and
other health care workers were still not believed to be risking getting
the virus from normal contact with patients with AIDS, or Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
"The risk of transmission of infection to health care workers from
patients is extremely low," the Atlanta-based centers said.
Of the 1,750 health care workers examined by the centers, 26 tested
positive for the AIDS virus, but for other reasons at least 23 were
considered at high risk for AIDS exposure. [In plain English, the
23 peope were either male homosexuals or IV drug users.]
AIDS, which has struck 13,402 people in the United States, killing
6,830, strikes most often among homosexual men and intravenous drug
users.
But at least two, and possibly three, health care workers in this
country were presumed to have been infected with the AIDS virus on the
job.
One is a nurse who accidentally stuck herself with a needle in
November 1983 and again in March 1984 while drawing blood from AIDS
patients.
Another is a part-time laboratory worker who cut his hand while
processing blood from a leukemia patient in December 1983. He also
stuck himself with a needle in August 1984 while processing blood from
several sources.
A third worker showed signs of AIDS virus after submitting to an
anonymous blood test.
Gerry Fisher
...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-smiley!fisher
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Nashua, NH: Where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous.peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (10/13/85)
Re: getting AIDS by sticking yourself with a needle while treating an AIDS patient. Wasn't there a potential epidemic of Lhasa Fever because some lab tech infected him or herself this way, a few years back?