SPECIAL treatment is being demanded by female Muslim medical students who are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs.
Women training in several hospitals in England, according to the Telegraph, have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam.
Universities and NHS trusts fear many more will refuse to co-operate with new Department of Health guidance, introduced this month, which stipulates that all doctors must be “bare below the elbow”.
The measure is deemed necessary to stop the spread of infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have killed hundreds.
Hygiene experts said last night that no exceptions should be made on religious grounds.
Dr Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at Imperial College London, said:
To wash your hands properly, and reduce the risks of MRSA and C.difficile, you have to be able to wash the whole area around the wrist. I don’t think it would be right to make an exemption for people on any grounds. The policy of bare below the elbows has to be applied universally.
Dr Charles Tannock, a Conservative MEP and former hospital consultant, added:
These students are being trained using taxpayers’ money and they have a duty of care to their patients not to put their health at risk. Perhaps these women should not be choosing medicine as a career if they feel unable to abide by the guidelines that everyone else has to follow.
But the Islamic Medical Association insisted that covering all the body in public, except the face and hands, was a basic tenet of Islam.
No practising Muslim woman – doctor, medical student, nurse or patient – should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow.
Dr Majid Katme, the association spokesman, said:
Exposed arms can pick up germs and there is a lot of evidence to suggest skin is safer to the patient if covered. One idea might be to produce long, sterile, disposable gloves which go up to the elbows.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm
If they don’t want to follow the rules, let them find something else to do, they have no business in hospitals in a civilized country if they won’t practice basic hygiene, and I am tired of politicians bending over backwards to placate them
February 4th, 2008 at 7:59 am
This threat of MRSA is real, once you allow the bacteria to enter your bloodstream, only God will have to save your life. Patients as well as the doctors are at risk of contracting this infection unlike HIV & Hepatitis. One study found 60% of doctors had their hands colonized with enterococci after handling a patient with enterococci infection.
This refusal to wash and scrub their hands will leave the doctors or medical students at risk of carrying MRSA home and spreading this micro-organism to their own family and children.
As patients, please refuse to be touched or treated by any doctor , nurse or medical student who refuse to wash their hands adequately (below elbow using soap and water for 15-30 seconds). You may be hated for being harsh, but this could save your life.
Indian higher cast people introduced untouchables because these people refused to wash themselves after cleaning toilets and were spreading bacteria in the community that killed healthy adults and children.
Only worry, I have is when people start treating all Asians to be Muslims, when there are Indians who are not Muslims, Afrocarabians who could be Muslims and Egyptians who look like Caucasians are Muslims.
Nature has its way of cleansing the society, this is one of the ways and I am sure there are a few more to come.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
If this story is true, then the offending person or persons should be sacked and then have all their welfare benefits stopped as well, then maybe they will either come to their senses and wash properly like every body else, or they will go back where they come from. I, and an awful lot more people in this country are heartily sick and tired of people coming into this country and then trying to change the rules to suit themselves. It would be a good idea if there was someway of keeping track of offenders, and then when a patient becomes infected, they could sue that nurse or doctor,or any body else for that matter.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
If you won’t wash as required you are unsuitable for the work. It is that simple, surely. This is all very vexing especially in a professional field. There is nothing wrong with modesty but this is ridiculous. I am not aware that this level of modesty is a tenet of Islam. The veil is not, so why is this? I think some interpret the rules to suit themselves. It’s very annoying. In the end it is alway we who are left feeling guilty for yet another attack on something else we never heard of. Why do these people want to live in the west?
February 4th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I wonder how a surgeon who claimed that he had a religious objection to using sterile scalpels would be treated. If your beliefs prevent you from completing a very necessary part of your job, especially if that part saves lives, you should probably change either your profession or your beliefs.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Allowing this is as insane as allowing Scientologists to work in a psychiatric hospital.
The whole point of these regulations is to stop the spread of disease. If some women feel they can’t abide by these regulations, then they should NOT be demanding special treatment.
Absolutely absurd.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Wash or go.
February 4th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
What is with these so called followers of a ‘true Islam’ who take everything so literally; the underlying principle is modesty and chastity in one’s conduct of affairs in life- baring the arms to scrub before surgery in no way violates that fundamental!
What are the chances of the team of doctors having sex because they saw each others arms while scrubbing?
It is because of this failure to see the essence of the doctrines in Islam that we end up blowing each other up, or slaughtering innocent people all the while Chanting Gods Name & dressed from head to toe in black- what purpose does that serve?
It’s incidents such as this which make being a Moslem such an embarrasment!; certainly my wife, who is a surgeon, is not going to refrain from baring her arms while scrubbing- but this does not amount to a violation of a basic tenet, so long as she is dressed modestly, whatever some ‘Islamic Body’ somewhere may have to say about it!
These so called priests of Islam have institutionalized Islam and buried it beneath a thicket of legalistic decrees; with them lies the blame for much of what is wrong with the moslem world.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Ew. That’s really unprofessional as well as disgusting. I am appalled.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
When they reviewed MRSA procedures at my local hospital they came up with another ‘faith-based’ danger – the hospital chaplain!
Think about it – most staff are contained within a well-policed area (e.g a ward)and don’t cross barriers to another so can’t spread infection to another self-contained unit. But the chaplain rushes from ward to ward and bedside to bedside, shaking hands left, right and centre and not stopping to wash them in between.
I’m told the hospital’s ‘solution’ was to just give him his own little bottle of soap -might as well have told patients to pray and hope for the best!
February 7th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
This follows on from an earlier story that some muslim hospital staff refused to scrub up because the disinfecting solution contained alcohol. Unfortunately the ones who suffer are those muslims who are happy to integrate.
(Oh, and Lesley Ash and a few 1000 more. That must have been a high bed she fell out of).
February 7th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Solution: Let the MCB and the Church fund their own hospitals for their own “flock” (Darwin knows they’ve got enough money to) and then run them by their own rules. Natural selection at it’s finest.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
The dead know nothing, Michael Martin. But at any rate, I would then be forced to wonder whether Muslim women might refuse surgeries that required the removal of their clothes.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:11 am
This story isnt even true. do some research, the Lancet published articles on this, there is no evidence to support the idea that bare arms are better than covered arms. its a propaganda stunt to make it look like somethings being done about mrsa, the real issues are lack of isolation and overcroweded wards. this article is racist purely as a diversion from those issues. you just need to think for yourself and you’ll see.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Well, presumably this problem would be avoided if the woman washed her arms in a place where there were no men watching. If that can’t be done, she can’t do that job. Simple really.