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South Africa's health system, already burdened with a high number of HIV-positive patients, could be dealt a further blow by infections among its medical staff, a recent article in the British Medical Journal has warned.
But the director of the South African Airways Netcare Travel Clinics, Andrew Jamieson, said "almost nothing" was known about the rate of infection among doctors, while the shortage of nurses could be linked to the pandemic as well as the emigration of nurses to other countries.
The South African Press Association quoted Jamieson as saying: "Although the potentially devastating impact of HIV and AIDS among health professionals on the capacity and integrity of the South African healthcare system has been acknowledged, only preliminary and sketchy data exist in this regard."
An investigation by the Human Sciences Research Council in 2002 showed more than 15 percent of health professionals were infected, with the nurses being most affected.
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