The executive chairman of the frozen food shop Iceland has retracted the claim that three of his staff contracted HIV after being attacked with needles by shoplifters.
Richard Walker wrote an article nearly a fortnight ago saying attacks on staff had reached an all-time high as a result of the rise in shoplifting.
“Colleagues are being slapped, punched and threatened with a range of weapons including knives, hammers, firearms and hypodermic needles,” he wrote. “Assaults have resulted in injuries ranging from a broken jaw to a fractured skull.”
In his original article for Mail Online, published on September 15, he said that three of his staff had contracted HIV from needle attacks, a claim that was subsequently removed, with the publisher saying on September 21 that Iceland had provided information about the infections in error.
Last week two charities and a group of MPs called on Walker to apologise, saying that his original claims detracted from their work on reducing stigma and misinformation about the virus. They added that, according to the UK Health Security Agency, the most recent documented case of HIV through needle-stick injury was in 1999.
Writing on Twitter/X on Monday, Walker said the original article was a draft. “I have learnt a lot over the last ten days, and spoken to professionals doing amazing work in this area,” he said.
“I am told such needle-stick occurrences are vanishingly rare and have not happened for many years. I am therefore naturally very sorry that the draft article contained this information.”
He added: “I obviously never had any intention of stigmatising people with HIV or causing distress, and I apologise to anyone who feels that they were adversely affected by this.”
Richard Angell, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, welcomed the apology. He said: “The way in which HIV is discussed in the media has a huge impact on public perceptions and fuels attitudes towards the virus that are rooted in the 1980s — that’s why our charity will always call it out.”
Among the other bodies that demanded an apology from Walker were the National Aids Trust and the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and Aids. The MPs said that Walker’s apology was welcome, albeit late.
