New rules are to be brought in surrounding healthcare staff with HIV, with the ban that stops them performing certain medical procedures, such as surgery, to be lifted first.
England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, said that it was time to scrap “out-dated rules”, as many of the country’s HIV policies were designed in the 1980s and had not kept up with advances in treatment.
The ban was originally imposed as there were fears that, if a HIV positive healthcare worker cut themselves while doing any form of ‘exposure prone procedures’, they might infect the patient.
However, from next April, surgeons, dentists, midwives and nurses with HIV will be able to work normally, providing they are taking drugs that eradicate the virus in the bloodstream. They must also have an undetectable viral load of HIV in their body and must be regularly monitored.
While in another move, from next year, people will be able to buy HIV self-testing kits that are currently illegal for home use. This law has been changed with the aim of improving early diagnosis.
Professor Davies said that what the country needs is a simpler system that continues to protect the public through encouraging people to get tested for HIV as early as possible and that does not hold back some of our best healthcare workers because of a risk that is “more remote than being struck by lightning”. Indeed, there have only been four cases of health workers with HIV infecting patients around the world and none of them was in the UK.
The change to the law will apply in England, Wales and Scotland but not to Northern Ireland, which will make an announcement on the matter at a later date.