Victorian dentist’s patients await HIV tests

HUNDREDS of patients of a dentist in eastern Victoria need to be tested for HIV after the practitioner contracted the virus.

Mother of 8 Karen Lyell was contacted by the department of health after she was treated by a Dentist who had unknowingly had HIV.

HUNDREDS of patients of a dentist in eastern Victoria still need to be tested for HIV infection after the practitioner contracted the virus this year.

Fewer than 90 of 399 at-risk patients have been cleared of contracting the virus in regional Bairnsdale after the dentist recently alerted authorities to the presence of HIV in his system.

While Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Rosemary Lester has played down the chances of cross infection, many in the city of 12,000 people, 280km west of Melbourne, are in a state of uncertainty.

Bairnsdale mother of eight Karen Lyell returned yesterday from Sydney to receive a letter by registered post. She is one of 399 people who have been contacted by the department after being exposed to the dentist.

“I was gobsmacked. I got the letter this afternoon and I phoned them about half an hour ago because the letter asks for you to ring the Health Department ... so that’s when I was given the news,” the 58-year-old told The Australian yesterday.

“They told me that I need to have a blood test to confirm one way or another where I stand.

“I’m just shaken at the moment. It’s confronting and I haven’t had time to process it.”

A testing clinic has been set up in Bairnsdale to enable patients to check their status confidentially.

Dr Lester said her department had investigated and that follow-up tests were “entirely precautionary’’. She said all HIV cases had to be reported to the Health Department, and that HIV was generally spread via unsafe sex with an infected person “and less frequently through blood-to-blood incidents such as needle-stick injuries’’. The dentist had stopped practising and had “co-operated fully’’ with the department, she added.

Victorian Health Minister David Davis said it was heartening that all tests so far been negative. He said those who had been advised of possible infection would be offered counselling.