York Hospital is condemned over HIV scare (From York Press)

York Hospital is condemned over HIV scare

9:19am Wednesday 30th June 2010 in News By Richard Catton, richard.catton@thepress.co.uk

THE handling of the recent HIV scare at York Hospital has been described as “disgraceful” by one of the city’s leading academics.

Professor David Maughan Brown, deputy vice-chancellor of York St John University, has accused NHS bosses of not caring “who they terrify” or “how severely they stigmatise people living with HIV”.

In a letter to The Press, Prof Maughan Brown questioned the thinking behind the hospital asking 519 patients to undergo HIV tests “because they have come into contact with a hospital worker who is HIV positive”.

He suggested there had been “a staggeringly inappropriate over-reaction by people so fearful of the risk of litigation, however incredibly remote, that they don’t care who they terrify or how severely they stigmatise people living with HIV”.

He claimed the alternative was that senior medical personnel in the UK were so ignorant about the transmission of the HIV virus that they believed it could be passed on by casual contact.

“Of the two disgraceful alternatives, one can but hope it is the former,” he said.

His comments come after The Press revealed last week how 101 former hospital patients in York had received letters asking them to attend HIV testing, after being treated by a member of clinical staff who was found to carry the virus.

Patients were offered support, counselling and the opportunity to undergo testing, but experts said the risk of cross-infection was very low.

A spokesman for NHS North Yorkshire and York said it would be “inappropriate” to comment on Prof Maughan Brown’s letter, due to an injunction preventing the publication of any information which could lead to the identification of the staff member. However, the trust repeated an earlier statement that only those who had received a letter asking them to undergo testing needed to contact their hospital.