
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993                   TAG: 9312050039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHILD AIDS NOT CAUSE FOR PANIC

Health officials and child-care experts expressed concern Saturday that reports of two children contracting the AIDS virus from other children, apparently through broken skin, would cause unnecessary panic among parents.

Scientists have detected two cases in which HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been transmitted from one child and one adolescent to others, apparently when infected blood from one entered the other through cuts or disease that broke the skin. In both cases, the children were living in the same household.

Pointing out that it has long been known that the infection can be caused through an exchange of blood, and that what is "excruciatingly rare" in the two cases was transmission through broken skin, New York State Health Commissioner Mark Chassin said Saturday: "I am very concerned that there may be an overreaction to these isolated cases.

"There is absolutely no reason to panic, to believe there is any dramatically increased risk to anybody contracting the disease."

Steven Matthews, a spokesman for the New York City Health Department, said, "No change [in policy] is needed whatsoever. Our concern about these two cases is that they will cause unnecessary fear and panic and potentially generate calls for exclusion of children or mandatory disclosure or testing that will lead to [discrimination]."

One of the two cases involves a pair of young boys in New Jersey. The other involves two teen-age brothers who are hemophiliacs.

Doctors know that one child infected the other because the strains of HIV are virtually identical. The experts found no evidence for the usual modes of transmission - sexual intercourse or contaminated needles. Thus, they believe the most probable route of transmission was the contact of one child's blood with the blood of another through a nosebleed or shared razor blade.

Concerned that parents might overreact to the two cases, Chassin said what is needed is "renewed emphasis on universal precautions against transmission of infectious disease, the usual precautions against exposure to blood and bodily fluids that should be taken not only in schools and day-care centers, but in homes as well."

Nancy Kolben, deputy director of Child Care Inc., a nonprofit research and public-policy organization that supports child-care agencies, said that, besides maintaining a sterile field when caring for open wounds, some of those precautions include use of gloves during diaper changes, proper cleaning of surfaces and sanitary toilet practices, particularly washing of hands.

by CNB