Nation IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : AIDS Report Pushes Infection Controls

Better use of infection-control procedures will be more effective than voluntary testing in minimizing the risk of AIDS transmission by health care workers, a congressional report concluded. The report, by the Office of Technology Assessment, said that the risk of health care workers passing along to patients the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS cannot be estimated precisely but evidence suggests it is very small. Recently adopted guidelines by the federal Centers for Disease Control, “if widely implemented, are likely to have the intended effect of reducing further the very small risk of HIV transmission in the workplace,” the report said.