Public health authorities in New South Wales, Australia have issued an urgent public warning to thousands of people who received dental care from a retired Sydney dentist over the past 25 years, urging them to get tested for serious bloodborne viruses after widespread failures in infection prevention were uncovered at his former clinic.
In a formal statement released Wednesday, the New South Wales Ministry of Health confirmed that inspections of Dr William Tam’s Strathfield-based clinic, located in Sydney’s western suburbs, found chronic poor cleaning protocols and inadequately sterilized medical equipment during a routine audit conducted this past April. Just two weeks after the audit was completed, Tam retired from practice, and has since been stripped of his dental registration, according to official records.
Officials note that the inadequate infection control measures put all former patients of Tam’s practice at low but non-negligible risk of contracting three dangerous bloodborne pathogens: hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV. Dr Leena Gupta, clinical director of public health for Sydney Local Health District, emphasized that these infections often remain asymptomatic for decades, even as they cause progressive, long-lasting damage to a patient’s health that can be avoided with early intervention.
“People with HIV, hepatitis B, or hepatitis C may not have any symptoms for decades, so it is important that people at risk of these infections are tested, so that they can access treatment as appropriate,” Gupta explained in the ministry’s statement.
A major complicating factor in the public health response is the complete lack of surviving patient records that would allow officials to directly contact everyone who received care from Tam over his decades of practice. Investigators estimate that Tam treated thousands of individual patients across the 25-year period in question, leaving public health teams with no option but to issue a broad public appeal to anyone who visited his clinic to come forward for testing.
Dr Zeina Najjar, a staff specialist with Sydney Local Health District, outlined the findings of the April audit during a Wednesday press briefing, confirming the lapses in sterilization and cleaning that prompted the public warning.
This event marks the third such public health alert related to unsafe dental practices in Sydney in less than a decade, highlighting ongoing concerns around infection control oversight in dental care across the region. In 2018, roughly 10,000 patients at a Haberfield dental clinic were urged to get tested for HIV and hepatitis after similar infection control failures were uncovered. Most recently, in October of 2024, patients of a Mortdale dental clinic in southern Sydney received the same warning, after that facility’s dentist was barred from practice for repeated breaches of national infection control standards.