§ Mrs. BeckettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many nurses and how many doctors have died from1046W contagious diseases originating at their work place in each of the last 15 years; what information is given to nursing and other staff of the risks of disease from specific patients; and if she will make a statement. [16946]
§ Mr. Sackville[holding answer 28 March 1995]: The information requested from the national health service industrial injuries scheme records would require extensive manual investigations and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. Information from other sources is as shown.
Employers are required by the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1985 to report specified diseases suffered by a person currently at work where the work involves an activity mentioned in the schedule. There is no requirement to report deaths resulting from these diseases. The specified diseases relevant to health care workers most likely to be fatal are hepatitis, tuberculosis and illnesses caused by a pathogen which presents a hazard to human health. The latter would include HIV. The table gives details of reports received since April 1986 where the occupation was given as nurse or doctor. Not all of these will have been occupationally acquired.
Year Hepatitis Tuberculosis Pathogen Total 1986–87 11 6 4 21 1987–88 9 3 — 12 1988–89 7 1 — 8 1989–90 8 2 — 10 1990–91 5 3 2 10 1991–92 4 5 12 21 1992–93 1 2 2 5 1993–94 — 2 2 4 The Public Health Laboratory Service keep records of how HIV infection and hepatitis B were probably acquired. No deaths from AIDS are known to have occurred in health care workers who acquired HIV infection occupationally. No fatal cases of acute hepatitis B are known to have occurred in a health care worker infected at work in the United Kingdom during the past 10 years.
The number of deaths from tuberculosis in health care workers infected at work is not known. However, a survey in 1988 revealed fewer than 50 health care workers with tuberculosis and the majority of those will not have acquired the disease through their work. Based on the known fatality rate for TB in this age group, only one or two of these cases will be expected to have died.
In 1990 The Department of Health issued a booklet "Guidance for Clinical Health Care Workers—Protection Against Infection With HIV and Hepatitis Viruses". Advice is also contained in guidelines by the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens; "HIV—the Causative agent of AIDS" also issued in 1990. Advice on protection of health workers was given in the British Thoracic Society guidelines in 1994. Copies of these documents are available in the Library.