How an occupational medicine physician views current blood-borne disease risks in health-care workers.

Estimating the risks of blood-borne diseases to health care workers is an important area of concern for occupational health physicians. It is best now to view this risk as an occupational injury that can be prevented. The specific numbers estimating risks are rarely as important to the worker as are methods that are available to reduce or eliminate this risk. By placing the risk of blood-borne diseases in perspective with other injuries, it can be appreciated from this information that the estimates of occupational risks of blood-borne diseases to health care workers is extremely variable, but will never be zero. The single most important variable that is preventable is exposure. Major research and educational methods are needed to continue to explore all avenues leading to exposure reduction in the health care setting.