The Nation - News from April 22, 1988

Health care workers with AIDS are nearly twice as likely as other AIDS patients to have contracted the disease through “undetermined” means, federal health officials said, although the occupational risk for such workers remains small. The national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reported that health care workers make up 5.4% of the 59,491 known U.S. AIDS patients and also make up a similar percentage of the population at large--5.7%. But while only 2.8% of the nation’s other AIDS patients are classified as having gotten the disease in an “undetermined” manner, nearly twice as many of the health care workers with AIDS fall into no known risk group--5.3%, or 135 in all. Reasons for the higher number of “undetermined” cases among health care workers are unknown, the CDC said.