AT LEAST five UK health workers have contracted HIV after being injured with needles used on patients, four in NHS hospitals and one in an armed services hospital. Nurses are the group most at risk and around a third are believed to have suffered a needlestick injury at some time. Sadly, there is rarely the same public outcry over these cases as there is when it is revealed that a healthcare worker is infected, regardless of whether the disease has actually been passed to a patient. Latest drug treatments mean that an injured nurse is less at risk from HIV as a result of injury than in the past, but still the stress and anxiety following these events is tremendous for individual nurses and their families.