Great Relief: testing for HIV and the prevention of mother to child transmissionAlmost four months Katya* and her husband lived in a permanent state of uncertainty, not knowing if their newborn daughter got HIV infected. “I felt guilty, suffered from fears, and started to doubt if everything indeed went fine during my pregnancy and labor. Two weeks ago my doctor called me. I felt greatly relieved to hear that my daughter was not HIV positive”, recalls Katya. Both Katya and her husband are HIV positive. “When I was twenty years old, I started together with a group of friends to inject drugs. It happened that we used the same needle, as we thought to be good friends of each other. After approximately a year, one of us found out that he was HIV positive, shortly after followed by another friend. I understood well that if they are infected, probably also I got the virus. My husband, who belonged to the same group of friends, appeared to be HIV positive as well.” After several years they got the wish to begin a family. During her pregnancy Katya became a model patient, doing exactly everything she was told by the medical staff. Pregnant women who are examined at the city AIDS Center are able to obtain drugs for all three stages of ARV prophylaxis. After 26 weeks’ gestation Katya got Thymazide administered. After thirty weeks she already got the necessary drugs that she needed to take during labor, and the syrup for the newborn infant. Finally she gave birth in a local maternity house. In Orenburg a tablet of nevirapine or intravenous retrovir is administered to HIV positive pregnant women during labor. Following birth, a newborn receives oral retrovir syrup for six weeks. Shortly after labor, a paediatrician from the AIDS Center visited Katya and her baby. To avoid postnatal transmission of HIV to the infant, she refrained from breastfeeding. After six weeks the baby received trimetoprim sulfate. Usually in Russia the HIV status of a child is determined at the age of eighteen months up to three years, but Katya’s daughter got an advanced HIV test at an earlier stage. Katya says that things became after the good news of the HIV negative status of her daughter normal or even better. “After all those uncertainties I even enjoy those moments in life which you would otherwise ignore”, says the mother when holding and kissing her baby. * The author changed her name to protect her anonymity.
|
