THIS WEEK IN 1985: Students kept from school in AIDS panic

Frightened parents kept their children away from a Hampshire school where a nine-year-old pupil was thought to be a carrier of the killer virus, AIDS.

By The Newsroom

Published 27th Sep 2017, 07:00 GMT

Updated 27th Sep 2017, 11:52 GMT

About 50 children from 45 families failed to attend the Scantabout Primary School, Chandlers Ford.

County education chiefs said they were ‘not surprised’ at the parents’ action.

One said: ‘Parents obviously have to have time to think about the situation.’

Parents were told at a meeting called by the education authority that the boy, a haemophiliac, had contracted the antibody to the AIDS killer virus after receiving blood from a man, who died earlier in the year.

It was stressed that the boy did not have AIDS and was not infectious and that the disease could only be passed on by the transfer of blood.