The General Medical Council, which regulates doctors in the UK, has declared that testing doctors and nurses who come to work in the UK would be illegal.
The statement follows last week’s news that expert advisers to the Department of Health have recommended HIV testing for all health care workers from abroad, following mounting concern over the number of health care workers with HIV being recruited from southern Africa.
A spokeswoman for the GMC told Scotland on Sunday that the Medical Act of 1983 “does not allow us to impose a compulsory requirement to test for HIV on doctors. The act does not require a doctor to comply. Before any type of testing could be brought in, the government would have to introduce new legislation.”
However, the Royal College of Surgeons stoked the controversy over HIV testing in the NHS on Monday, with a recommendation from the College’s bloodborne virus committee that if the terms and conditions of employment for surgeons require HIV testing, “then the Royal College as a body would wish to have the right to test patients before an operation.”
Bernard Ribiero, chairman of the committee, told The Times that “it is only a matter of human rights that they can test the person on whom they are operating, particularly if this person is in a high risk group [if you expect a surgeon to put himself up for an HIV test].