He was admitted to investigate for his recurrent severe pneumonia.
After admission, a proper medical history was taken. Family history revealed that both his parents died due to complications of AIDS.
He has a elder brother, just 6 years old, who has recently been tested positive. Both the boys live with their grandmother who has no source of income and no family support.
The reason for the baby boy's recurrent pneumonia was apparent, but I was waiting for the test results with crossed fingers. The results came, it was positive for HIV. But there still remains a small hope that it might be the antibodies from the mother's blood that would clear off after he is about 2 years of age.
When my seniors were investigating more and trying to fit him into a classification of HIV, I was thinking about the future of the boy. How could his parents be so ignorant? They already knew their HIV status
when their first child was to be born. They simply ruined two lives...
As for me, I still remember the grandmother's wet eyes.
3 comments:
The saddest part of HIV medicine is dealing with children. What would we expect even we treat them with ART? How to deal with their nutrition, schooling, disclosing the status, social integration and many many other aspects.....
I conducted a mobile camp targeted to infants born to PLHA and in that mobile camp, I served for 8 such innocent kids. Gave cotrimoxazole prophylaxis, feeding counselling and initiated ART presuming advanced HIV disease (without confirming the HIV status)
We are compelled to presume and treat every infants born to PLHA mother as HIV positive, until they are confirmed at 1 or one and half year of age. Is it fair? Till when???????????????
Abish! You're a great writer, wauw! Looking forward to follow your stories :) Say hi to everyone in Dhankuta for me!
X, Ineke
wow what a cool blog you have…..hey can we exchange our links……?
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