Search for Aussie patients of HIV positive dentist

Aug 24 2006

Health authorities in Australia are trying to contact hundreds of people who were treated by a female dentist who has been diagnosed as HIV positive.

The Queensland Health Department says as many as 700 patients, both adults and children, were treated by an HIV positive dentist, working in the public health system in the Bowen and Collinsville areas.

Chief health officer, Dr. Jeannette Young, says though they believe the risk of infection is minimal, several hundred patients who were treated since last December will be screened as a precaution.

Dr. Young said the dentist was Australian-trained and had been working for Queensland Health since 2005.

Blood testing clinics have been set up at the local hospitals and information and counselling is also being offered.

A 24 hour information hotline, 1800-427-799, has also been set up.

Michael Brunker, Mayor of the Bowen Shire has called for calm over the revelations.

The dentist has been commended for notifying Queensland Health as soon as she was diagnosed.

She had apparently contracted HIV at some point at the end of December last year but had only discovered her condition on Tuesday when a test came back positive and questions are bound to be raised over the 8 month delay in getting the results.

Dr. Young says they will advise all the patients that she has treated since December 15, of the situation and because of the long "window" period for contracting the disease, those who had been treated by the dentist in the last three months will need to return for a second test.

Dr. Young says there has never been a case of HIV transmitted by dentistry in Australia, and the danger lay in whether the dentist had cut herself accidentally while working in the closed confines of a patient's mouth.

She emphasises that the risk of a patient contracting HIV is minimal and the dentist had followed standard medical protocols, using rubber gloves, surgical masks and sterilised equipment.

The population of Bowen is around 10,000 and the coal-mining town of Collinsville, 80km to the west, has a population of 2,000.