Midwife HIV-positive

Health officials are contacting a number of women after a hospital midwife tested positive for HIV. Sixteen women are being offered counselling and tests if they want them, NHS spokesman Jonathan Street said.

Injunctions are in force preventing the people involved being identified, Mr Street added. He said: "A healthcare worker who has been practising in a hospital in south London has been diagnosed as HIV positive.

"A total of 16 people are being contacted and offered counselling and confidential HIV tests if they wish. The risk of transmission of HIV from a healthcare worker to a patient is very small indeed. There have been no cases at all in the UK and only two incidents in the world in which such transmission may have occurred."