How could you...........

[CAOX3]

http://www.timeslive.co.za/news/article270337.ece

There isnt a lot of info here but in my opinion determing guilt in a situation like this seems difficult.

 

[vquintessence]

Yeah this story is quite lacking in details. I was unaware that you can pinpoint the transmission of HIV to within days, let alone cite a precise timeframe down to the hours of a given point... what would be the parameters for this test? Viral load tests is the only indicator I could rummage up on the internet.

The odds of this poor pt trasmitting HIV solely from the paramedics negligence is slim to nill. The medic would have to be practically contacting her wounds with blood soaked hands, and using absolutely no sterilization techniques for any techiniques s/he employed (ex: splinting open fx's, IV initiation, etc).

Few blurbs from the American CDC:

In the health care setting, workers have been infected with HIV after being stuck with needles containing HIV-infected blood or, less frequently, after infected blood gets into a worker’s open cut or a mucous membrane (for example, the eyes or inside of the nose). There has been only one instance of patients being infected by a health care worker in the United States; this involved HIV transmission from one infected dentist to six patients. Investigations have been completed involving more than 22,000 patients of 63 HIV-infected physicians, surgeons, and dentists, and no other cases of this type of transmission have been identified in the United States.

HIV in the Environment
Scientists and medical authorities agree that HIV does not survive well in the environment, making the possibility of environmental transmission remote. HIV is found in varying concentrations or amounts in blood, semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, saliva, and tears. (See page 3, Saliva, Tears, and Sweat.) To obtain data on the survival of HIV, laboratory studies have required the use of artificially high concentrations of laboratory-grown virus. Although these unnatural concentrations of HIV can be kept alive for days or even weeks under precisely controlled and limited laboratory conditions, CDC studies have shown that drying of even these high concentrations of HIV reduces the amount of infectious virus by 90 to 99 percent within several hours. Since the HIV concentrations used in laboratory studies are much higher than those actually found in blood or other specimens, drying of HIV-infected human blood or other body fluids reduces the theoretical risk of environmental transmission to that which has been observed--essentially zero.

 

[So. IL Medic]

The odds of this poor pt trasmitting HIV solely from the paramedics negligence is slim to nill. The medic would have to be practically contacting her wounds with blood soaked hands, and using absolutely no sterilization techniques for any techiniques s/he employed (ex: splinting open fx's, IV initiation, etc).

While it is true that infection from HIV+ healthcare workers to a patient is very rare, that doesn't seem to be the case here. In reading the article, it appears that the medic worked on first patient then worked on this woman - without changing gloves. That would be literally contacting her wounds with blood soaked hands. If so and I stress the if, he is liable for any cross contamination and infection.

 

[JPINFV]

I got the same impression from So. IL. However there's too little information about how the supposive trasmission occured.