Dutch student swallows HIV blood

A medical student at the University of Utrecht in Holland could be infected with HIV after swallowing infected blood during an experiment, writes Clare Chapman.

The female student was taking part in a practical that involved extracting blood from a jar using a pipette. It was during this time that the girl was thought to have swallowed some of the blood. Later examinations of the blood found it to be HIV-positive.

A university spokesman said that blood was normally examined before use by students but in this case it had not been.

The student has to wait the six months incubation period to find out if she has also been infected. The spokesman added that it was not clear how the student came to swallow the blood and said that it was not usual for first-semester students to experiment with infected blood.