While writing this article, two things came to my mind. First was that my teacher at Armed Forces Medical College used to say that being mother is a dreams of every woman and as a doctor you have an obligation to full fit it. Another thing I remember is that, in the former part of HIV epidemic there used to be debates at doctors conferences on topic: Whether pregnancy with HIV infection should be considered. Many doctors still tell HIV infected woman that they cannot have pregnancy with HIV infection and shy away from their duty to fulfill this dream of a woman. Even today many doctors advise HIV infected pregnant woman to go for abortion. These are things of the past now, as effective anti-retroviral therapy has changed this scenario. In fact, in many countries now transmission of HIV from mother to child has become absolute zero.
In our country our centre is one of the best centres for planning pregnancy with HIV infection. HIV infected couples from all over country and abroad come to us for having healthy HIV negative child. There are various scenarios in pregnancy with HIV infection. We diagnose most of the women with HIV when they are already pregnant and go for their antenatal check up. This diagnosis comes as a rude shock to them and initial reaction is of despair and they feel helpless. Ideally they should be referred to an HIV specialist immediately for a further course of action. Any couple coming to us for pregnancy with HIV infection, we discuss all aspects related to it in significant details. We support them in the best way. Ideally a woman should come before conceiving the child so we can plan everything well in advance.
We have many such stories and I will share one of them. A couple came to us from Punjab in April 2014, Manjeet and husband Balwinder. They already had two pregnancies and unfortunately both kids did not survive after getting infected with HIV. They both were dejected. We spoke to them and assured them of best help. We went through their case history and devised a treatment plan for them. God blessed them with a healthy baby boy in October 2015. They remained in our treatment and were blessed with their second child in December 2018. Both kids are HIV negative and with children, Manjeet and Balwinder reclaimed their life and enjoying the bliss of parenthood.
So if you are an HIV positive couple or either of partners is infected then do not drop your dream to be a parent and pregnancy with HIV infection is possible and we have reduced transmission to zero if we plan it well.
In next blog I will talk about Post Exposure Prophylaxis for HIV which means if anybody has contact with HIV-infected person then there are medical interventions which if they are done in time then can prevent HIV infection.
Yours Truly
Dr Alok
(All names and places are changed in stories to protect the identity and it is shared after permission from patients)
