I have been informed that an employee is a carrier of Hepatitis B. I welcome any comments as to how best to handle this. At the moment this is being treated in confidence. I understand that the employee has no legal obligation to disclose his condition. As he has now informed me, what is the best way forward. We are a large civil company with over 200 employees.

You treat them no differently to all of those Hep B, Hep C or HIV positive patients who shared the bus of train to work with you this morning, who sat in the pub with you last night, or who might be preparing your dinner when you go out to enjoy a meal tonight. There might be a few practical issues, for example if there is an accident, and since you do know it would be a good idea to brush up on general hygiene precautions to a apply in the event of an accident BUT NIT more generally like sitting at the same table for lunch or having a separate toilet - that would be both unnecessary and discriminatory. Feel free to get in touch with specifics, since the details may be relevant and are not appropriate for open discussion. However, my view is that you employ 500 - 10000 staff - maybe another 1 or 2 of those carry Hepatitis B, 1 or more have HepC and perhaps 1 with HIV. The numbers may be less, but depending on the profiling of your woukforce may be much higher. For those individuals, who are to all intent and purposes quite well and able to perform all of their duties perfectly well, you have no concerns or controls.

Not too much about the power of IOSH - I'm not an IOSH member, but we are of course using their forum