HIV tests for NHS staff an 'attack on foreign workers'

The Department of Health was accused yesterday of making a politically motivated attack on foreign health workers after it announced that all new NHS staff involved in surgery, obstetrics or dentistry will be required to have compulsory tests for HIV and hepatitis to prevent them transmitting the infections to patients.

The move has been prompted by the increase in recruitment of NHS staff from overseas, a policy that has been heavily criticised in some sections of the media. In some sub-Saharan African countries, which together supplied more than 3,000 nurses to the NHS in 2001, one in three adults is infected with HIV. Medical organisations said the move had more to do with silencing critics of the NHS's overseas recruitment drive. The tests for HIV and hepatitis B and C will be done before new staff are permitted to take up posts where they would be required to perform any "exposure prone procedure" where injury to the health worker could expose the patient to their blood.

The Health Department has admitted that the risks of transmission during a medical procedure are low: there have been only two known cases worldwide of HIV transmission from health workers to patients. Neither case was in the UK.

Janet Fyle, midwifery adviser at the Royal College of Midwives, said: "Unless staff are tested repeatedly it is a pointless exercise. People can become infected at any time. We think testing all new staff is a smokescreen to keep [the Government's] critics quiet. There have been only two cases of HIV transmission by health workers in the last 20 years."

Vivienne Nathanson, head of science at the British Medical Association, said: "The viruses are all different and differences in transmission require different solutions. We must not be reliant on simply testing before commencing employment."

An estimated one in five NHS workers carry out exposure prone procedures mainly in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, dentistry and midwifery. There were 74,000 staff recruited by the NHS in 2001, implying that 15,000 would have to undergo compulsory tests.

All other staff will be offered testing on a voluntary basis. Those who test positive will still be permitted to work in the NHS provided they do not carry out exposure prone procedures. Overseas staff will be tested in their country of origin and again on arrival in Britain.

The measures, developed by an expert group of professionals convened by the Health Department, tighten the existing requirement for health workers involved in exposure- prone procedures to test themselves voluntarily if they think they may have been infected.

The Royal College of Surgeons said it wanted a complementary right to test patients, rather than health workers, where there was a risk of health workers being infected. Bernard Ribeiro, chairman of the college's blood borne viruses committee, said: "If I sustain a significant injury during an operation and I don't know that patient's HIV status, I reserve the right to test that patient with or without their consent."

Pat Troop, deputy chief medical officer, said: "The UK already has rigorous measures in place to ensure that patients are not put at risk. These new measures ... are designed to improve protection still further."

A spokesman for the Health Department denied that the measures were directed at staff from overseas. He added: "We do not envisage huge numbers of HIV-infected people applying for jobs in the NHS."