 Dr.
David Henderson chose academic medicine as a career because
it would permit him to teach and care for patients while he
remained involved in research. As the first official hospital
epidemiologist at the NIH Warren Magnuson Clinical Center, Dr.
Henderson was charged with protecting the hospital staff from
HIV infection, even before the virus and its mode of transmission
were identified.
“I wanted the health care practitioners to be as knowledgeable
as we could make them and also to be aware that they were taking
some risks that we could not measure,” remembers Dr. Henderson,
who currently is deputy director for clinical care at the Clinical
Center. He and other researchers devised the guidelines to reduce
the risks for transmission of this bloodborne infection while
preserving the confidentiality of HIV-infected patients.
As a hospital epidemiologist, Dr. Henderson recalls the early
efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS, both in the community
and in the healthcare setting. Implementing these strategies
often made it possible for physicians to treat patients and
researchers to study the disease as safely as was possible.
The lessons learned from the early management of patients with
AIDS underscored the need to remain vigilant against all infectious
diseases. |
