A positive family
Living with HIV is hard enough. Being parents who have passed on HIV to a child is even harder.
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Laura has been living with HIV for three years. During that time, she has seen her brother and first partner – who passed on the virus to her – die from AIDS. Still, HIV has given Laura reasons to keep going: her teenage son Santiago, who is HIV positive; her partner Javier, also HIV positive; and her hope to have more healthy children.
Laura was pregnant with Santiago when her first partner was diagnosed. “I didn’t tell the doctor at first. I refused to believe that my son or I could be HIV positive,” she says.
“When Santiago was nine months old he kept getting sick, so I finally told the doctor about my ex-partner’s condition. They did the tests and my son was diagnosed with HIV. It was a different time then. They practically condemned him to death.”
Laura went with Santiago to Lima, Peru’s capital, where the diagnosis was confirmed and he was enrolled for antiretroviral treatment. “Those months were difficult. Family members refused to see us out of fear they would catch the virus. But my parents showed love to their grandson and supported us economically.”
When they returned to Pucallpa, Laura was tested and began treatment. Thanks to her care, Santiago grew up healthy and started school. She went back to her nursing career and currently works as a counsellor at a local hospital’s Sexually Transmitted Infections Programme.
Laura met Javier, a lab technician, through work. She didn’t tell him she was HIV positive until he said he wanted a relationship. Laura insisted that Javier do the ELISA test first and it came back positive. “Life gave me a new challenge: to support Javier.”
“And she has supported me ever since,” Javier says, having just returned from the health centre where he started volunteering a few weeks ago.
Javier tells us that even though he studied health sciences, he didn’t take prevention seriously. Now that he is HIV positive, he has faced rejection from friends and colleagues. “People found out at the hospital and stopped being friends. That’s why, even though many years have passed, I haven’t told my family. I don’t think they would understand. They would blame Laura.”
Once they had come to terms with being a couple living with HIV, they decided to become parents. “We had taken good care of each other to be healthy enough to get pregnant. We went to all the check-ups during the pregnancy. The plan was to do a caesarean section but there were complications at the hospital and it was a natural birth. We were all very worried but fortunately my baby tested negative for HIV,” Laura says.
Javier recalls the hospital staff’s lack of sensitivity. “They would look for me, shouting, ‘Where is the husband of the woman with HIV?’ Thankfully, my family wasn’t present.”
Now that Javier and Laura have decided to have another child, they hope that they – like all people living with HIV – receive respectful care on the day of their daughter’s birth.
Living with HIV is hard enough. Being parents who have passed on HIV to a child is even harder: “I often talk with Santiago about his sexuality. Sometimes seriously, sometimes not. But always reminding him that he must be responsible with his actions because they will affect the life of another person,” Laura says, while looking at Santiago. He gives her a look as if to say, “why are you telling them all this?”
“So others know that it’s possible to keep going,” she says, “that this moment is the best time of my life because we are all ok.”
