Indian doctor introduces single people infected by HIV

Caste and beauty are classic criteria for those who are looking for fate in the marriage market of India. But increasingly, an HIV - the AIDS virus is added to them, writes The Wall Street Journal (translation on the website inopressa.ru ).

In India, where 5.1 million people are infected, the disease is a shameful stigma forcing young men and women to hide the presence of HIV. At the same time, they experience a desire, and social pressure encourages them to marry. Some turn to Sunity Solomon, a leading specialist in AIDS, who, by virtue of his profession, knows thousands of HIV infected, including those who are looking for their spouse.

A 65-year-old woman-doctor, microbiologist, Dr. Solomon combines modern medicine with the ancient tradition of matchmaking, helping men and women who have become victims of AIDS epidemics in India, marry and have children.

“Marriages in India are not in heaven,” she says. “They are arranged.” This is true for HIV-infected.

Solomon introduced 20 pairs in which both partners were carriers of HIV. She began this practice in response to the requests of patients in her clinic at the Center for Reside Studies in Maras. In relation to such families, it uses modern technologies that include the use of drugs and artificial fertilization to help them give birth to healthy children. On her account, 50 children born from infected mothers who became pregnant from donor sperm, since their husbands were carriers of HIV. She helped 200 infected women to give birth to healthy children, giving the mother and child antivirus drugs, and then conducting a cesarean section.

At the 12th annual conference on retroviral diseases that took place this week in Boston, many doctors talked about the problems associated with the treatment of AIDS, including the availability, cost, and toxicity of the drugs. Difficulties make it difficult to prevent new cases. In India, where the epidemic is young, the prevention has a chance of success.

One of the goals of Solomon is to prevent marriage of infected men with unfortunate women, which is a serious problem of the Indian heterosexual epidemic. At first, AIDS struck salesmen and prostitutes and penetrated the middle class through customers who brought the virus home. According to Solomon, about 80% of patients in her AIDS clinic are monogamous and married.

One of the patients, a young engineer, whose parents persistently demanded that he get married, asked Solomon to find him a "pretty girl" infected with HIV. “He did not tell them that he is the bearer of the virus, because it would break their heart,” says Solomon. In search of the bride, she wrote to her colleagues. Some candidates were infected widows, others were infected with blood transfusion. A woman, infected with an unknown way, conquered the heart of a young man.

“They sent me a photo. The girl was a real beauty. Anyone would fall in love,” says Solomon. The engineer flew to Bombay, met a girl, married, and then informed his parents about it. Three months later, his wife became pregnant. The child was born healthy.

Dr. Solomon is the daughter of a leather tycoon, she married a cardiac surgeon Viktor Solomon. “It was a marriage by love,” she says. Now her son, a 25-year-old Sunil, works as a doctor in her clinic.

About 18 thousand patients have passed through the clinic. Often these are young bachelors who find out that they are infected when they pass the AIDS test before leaving for work abroad. If the bachelor wants to marry, Solomon tells him about his responsibility to inform the woman that he is infected, or consider the possibility of marriage on the HIV carrier.

Some men are asking them to find their wife. “Instead of looking at a combination of horoscopes, I analyze the combination of the serological status of blood,” she says.

Add to this the factors of religion, caste and beauty, and you will see that each time you have to perform the "feat of Hercules," she says. "We have been represented by all layers of society - doctors, lawyers, engineers are infected." She introduces a "doctor with a nurse, a policy with a social worker."

A significant place in the work of Solomon is occupied by consulting unfortunate women whose husbands are carriers of HIV, in particular on issues of how to get pregnant without infecting. The arranged marriages implies that a woman will quickly become a mother.

She recommends safe sex using condoms to all patients. But many couples want children. "Patients say:" If I get infected, the virus will kill me in 10 years. But if I do not give birth, I will be thrown out into the street in a year ", - explains Solomon.

Solomon offers unfortunate women artificial fertilization with a sperm of an unfortunate donor. “You pretend that this is your husband’s child. The mother -in -law is happy,” Solomon explains. Many women discuss this option with husbands.

With women who insist on the sperm of her husband, Solomon applies an unusual technique. For six months, she treats her husband with antivirus drugs. Then she allowed the spouses for a week to forget about the condom. “This is a big risk,” she admits. “Two years ago, such a technique would be called unethical.”

But for the most part, the risk is rewarded, the doctor says. Four attempts were made, three healthy and one dead child were born. Mothers did not become infected.

For lonely Indians infected by HIV, a matchmaking marriage is a way out. One patient, who is 31 years old, wrote that his wife became his "real friend and best half, and knowledge of HIV makes every day" a precious gift for us. "