HIV in nursery

[worriedperson]

AIBU to worry about this?
The guides I have read all say there is no risk of infection as long as proper hygiene procedures are carried out.
However, the staff, although good in other ways, are not that hygiene-conscious, for example, they send children home in wet pants, having not noticed they have had an accident.
Is there any real risk of catching it?
Also, what if one child bites another?

HIV isn't only an STD. It can be passed on from mother to child through childbirth and I think breastmilk. Also sharing needles with someone with the diease can make you at risk of catching it. Do they do alot of intravenous drugs in your DC's nursery?

It can not be transferred through urine and I'm pretty sure biting even hard enough to draw blood would pass on the disease.

Maybe OP should research HIV and Aids via a good website?

If the staff at your DC's nursery aren't very good about hygiene you should probably worry more about the spread of tummy bugs and colds imo.

It's none of your business to be speculating about the health of others based on rumour and it's none of your business because your child is not at risk. Isn't this second thread like this, this month? Why are people still not educated? I'm not HIV, nor do I know any one who is (to my knowledge), but I still know the facts about it.

Threads like this make me feel like I have been sent back in time.

Id be concerned too, its one of those "scary" things isnt it? Even though I know the risk would be miniscule, I just know it would always worry me.

Your child is probably at no risk at all, the chances of it being passed at nursery are non-existant and unlikely.

I'm sure they will have something in place ot giuard against cross contaminaition anyway. It is part of the EYFS policies.

WRT wet pants, you should let the supervisor know if this is really the case as that would worry me.

Thandeka thank you. Your answer is very helpful.

The speculation from posters about an African child shows a lot about prejudices doesn't it.

Also I have never seen the mother.

Although salive, tears, sweat, urine and faeces are a LOW infection risk for HIV, they are not a NON-infection risk, and given your nursery's lax attitude to hygeine, I would be whipping my child out (regardless of whether you have a child with HIV there - as many other illnesses are bodily fluid born and are much more contagious that HIV)

The vast majority of HIV infections are sexually transmitted - but not all.

HIV is not an STD . Its a blood borne virus.

It can be transmitted through sex, but its usually transmitted by injecting users sharing needles
and it is very unlikely to be transmitted through biting. There has to be blood to blood contact and the blood from the infected person needs to go directly into the other persons blood stream.

HIV does not live outside the body, Hep C does.

Please don't get caught up in myths and hearsay please check out the Terance Higgins Trust website www.tht.org.uk/informationresources/

How do you know there is a child with HIV in the nursery?

Researchers have estimated the rate of breast milk transmitted HIV to be over 16%, which is not very very low at all.

Agree that sending children home in wet pants is totally unacceptable!

To answer your question, yes YABU and no there is no real risk to your child.

Can I ask how this sensitive information "got out"?

I find that quite shocking in itself. This is the 21st century after all. Are people really so ignorant and judgemental nowadays?

If a child who has just has his/her lip split, and then bites the child who has split his/her lip, and one of them is carrying HIV, infection is a very real risk.

And I can guarantee that there is not one nursery in this land where that has not happened once in the past 5 years (the fight, not the infection)

Any child with HIV in this country is almost certainly on medication. This will decrease the viral load, and lower any risk of transmission. I don't think urine/saliva are high risk fluids anyway. Certainly, a good friend of mine with HIV, who I trusted completely to know the risks of infection, used to share a glass with me (admittedly different from spitting into a wound) as long as he didn't have open sores at the time.

I also understand that HIV is a very fragile virus once exposed to air (ie whatever fluid you're worrying about needs to pass directly from one child to another). Re biting, this site has some information on risks of transmission:

"Being bitten by a person with HIV. Each of the very small number of cases has included severe trauma with extensive tissue damage and the presence of blood. There is no risk of transmission if the skin is not broken."

This nursery sounds dire. The not changing wet children is one thing. The seeping out of confidential information about a child is another.

I'm a nursery/reception TA colditz and have to say in all my years we've never had a biting incident such as the one you described.

ladyanonymous thanks, I will look at that site.

I do worry about the children left in wet clothes, but it is not actually my child.

We have 2 adopted and one fostered child in our family, so I am very aware that many children do not live with their mothers. I would not dream of judging a thin ill-looking mother by her appearance and guessing she was HIV positive.

I don't think it was odd to name-change, I don't want to draw more attention to this child.

OP, how do you know about the child who has HIV?

And as if living with HIV wasn't hard enough

Feel like a time traveller. Backwards.

Your worry is based on hearsay and scaremongering. I was tested for HIV when pregnant and can honestly say it worried me, even though I knew the chances were so slim, just because it is such a vicious disease. However, there is no way of knowing who does or does not have HIV, in nursery or in Tesco, and going into panic mode is of no help. Stop listening to the rumours, weigh up the evidence and (hopefully) come to the conclusion that your child is at no more risk of catching HIV at nursery than anywhere else, and that the risks are miniscule. God knows there is enough to worry about as a mother, real, everyday dangers, without adding conditions which are incredibly unlikely to be passed on.

Deal with the fact they send you child home wet, though. Unacceptable.

How do you know? Because if someone has spread this confidential information - nursery worker? - then they should be reported and sacked. Confidential is confidential, other parents do not have a right to know.

The risk is tiny even if a child at your childs nursery is HIV+ve. Tiny but not 0. I think some of the posters are being a little harsh to the OP given the over reation people on here seem to have to their child being in contact with all manor of harmless childhood illness.

I would ponder at the hygiene issues at the nursery and the fact that this information 'got out'. If the staff allowed this info to get out it is very unprofessional and I wouldn't want my kid to go somewhere where they seem to care so little about a child as to make his/her private medical details public.