Barbara Fassbinder; Nurse Contracted AIDS While Helping Patient

Barbara Fassbinder, 40, a nurse who became one of the first in the health-care field to become infected with AIDS while on the job. She contracted the HIV virus that causes AIDS in 1986 while treating a patient in an emergency room at a Prairie du Chien, Wis., hospital. She had been pressing a bandage on a patient’s wound when the patient’s blood mingled with her own through cuts on her hand that she had gotten from gardening. The patient died of the complications of AIDS, but it was not until she tried to give blood in 1990 that her own AIDS was discovered. Mrs. Fassbinder then began to travel, warning other health-care workers about infection dangers. In Iowa City, Iowa, on Tuesday of the complications of AIDS.