Media Releases

U of T providing health information to number of students

August 23, 2013

TORONTO, ON — The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is reach­ing out to a num­ber of stu­dents to pro­vide them with health-relat­ed infor­ma­tion.

Stu­dents who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the cours­es: PHE 325Y and PHE 225S from 2006 until 2012, PSL 372H from 2005 until 2011, and the Youth Sum­mer Pro­gram from 2008 until 2011 are being noti­fied via mail regard­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in cer­tain lab activ­i­ties.

The issue applies only to stu­dents who agreed to have their blood test­ed with a fin­ger-stick device dur­ing the lab por­tion of these cours­es. These devices have been used safe­ly for many years in many set­tings. How­ev­er, some reports have been pub­lished show­ing that, in set­tings very dif­fer­ent than ours, some ways of using these devices can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly lead to trans­mis­sion of Hepati­tis B virus (Hep B). While sim­i­lar notices have been issued by oth­er uni­ver­si­ties in Cana­da, there are no pub­lished reports of trans­mis­sion in the set­tings and pat­terns of uses such as the labs in which these stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed.

Stu­dents with ques­tions can email: healthask@utoronto.ca.

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Media con­tact:
U of T Media Rela­tions Team
Tel: 416–978-0100
media.relations@utoronto.ca