Healthcare staff in England, Wales and Scotland
having HIV treatment will be able to take part in all tasks, including surgery
and dentistry.
England's chief medical officer, Prof Dame Sally
Davies, said it was time to scrap "outdated rules".
Self-testing kits for HIV will also be legalised
from April 2014, with the aim of improving early diagnosis.
Prof Davies said many of the UK's HIV policies were
designed in the 1980s and had been left behind by scientific advances and
effective treatments.
'Simpler system'
She told the BBC that patients controlling their
infection with medication were not a danger: "The risk is negligible and I
would accept that for myself, for my family and I think it's right."
She said: "It is time we changed these
outdated rules which are sometimes counter-productive and limit people's
choices on how to get tested or treated early for HIV.
"What we need is a simpler system that
continues to protect the public through encouraging people to get tested for
HIV as early as possible and that does not hold back some of our best
healthcare workers because of a risk that is more remote than being struck by
lightning."
Around the world, there have been four cases of
health workers infecting patients, none of which was in the UK.
Under current guidelines healthcare staff with HIV
must not carry out "exposure prone procedures" - where the worker's
blood could contaminate the patient's open tissues.
These procedures include those where the worker's
gloved hands may be in contact with sharp instruments, needle tips or sharp
pieces of the patient's bone or teeth, according to the
UK advisory panel for healthcare workers infected with bloodborne viruse.
Under the new system, healthcare workers with HIV
will be allowed to undertake all procedures if they are on effective
combination anti-retroviral drug therapy.
They must also have an undetectable viral load of
HIV in their body, and must be regularly monitored.
“Start Quote
Advances in medication have transformed what it
means to live with HIV, and it's great to see regulations starting to catch up”
End Quote Sir Nick Partridge Terrence
Higgins Trust
Public Health England will set up a confidential
register holding data on infected workers.
About 110 staff currently working in the NHS,
including doctors and midwives, are covered by the current regulations, Prof
Davies added.
The change applies in England, Wales and Scotland,
but does not yet apply in Northern Ireland, which will make an announcement at
a later date.
Stigma
Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National Aids
Trust, welcomed the new policy for being "based on up-to-date scientific
evidence and not on fear, stigma or outdated information".
Sir Nick Partridge, chief executive at Terrence
Higgins Trust, said: "Advances in medication have transformed what it
means to live with HIV, and it's great to see regulations starting to catch
up."
About 100,000 people in the UK are living with HIV,
although experts say a quarter of those who are infected do not know they have
it.
In 2011, there were around 6,000 new diagnoses of
HIV in the UK.
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