 | Today is World Aids Day. Commercial sex
workers clean the 12-ft high symbol of AIDS
at Byculla municipal school. |
MANY private practitioners refuse to deliver babies of pregnant HIV positive women across Mumbai irrespective of their caste, creed or SEC (socio-economic class). The reason: they feel they might not have the required co-operation of support staff to treat HIV+ mothers.
They also fear that their practice might be affected if they treat such patients. Hence, pregnant women are increasingly turning to JJ Hospital, among other public hospitals, for safe deliveries and seeking treatment that will prevent AIDS from affecting their unborn children.
Moms speak
A 26-year-old clerk, who travelled from Pune to deliver her baby at JJ, said, “I was screened in Pune and found to be HIV+. Our doctor in Pune hesitated to deliver the baby and instead referred us to JJ.”
Another HIV+ mother, Payal Khatu (33), a schoolteacher, recently underwent an abortion. Khatu, a resident of Bhayandar, is undergoing post-op treatment at JJ. “Our family doctor referred us to this hospital. The staff is good at their job.”
700 deliveries
JJ’s gynaecology department has witnessed over 700 deliveries of HIV infected mothers since 2001. It provides drugs to them to prevent the transmission of the virus to the infant.
Dr Rekha Daver, HOD, Obstetrics and Gynaecology at JJ, said, “I’ve had over 60 women in the last year who were refused delivery directly or indirectly by private hospitals in the city. If the department only treated its own pool of patients and not the referrals, it might have only conducted 40 deliveries last year instead of the 100 it performed,” added Daver.
Some hospitals quote high prices, which force patients to turn to government hospitals. “One patient told me that one hospital had quoted a high sum for the delivery as they would need to discard all the equipment they would use after her Caesarean operation,” revealed Daver.
AIDS screening tests can cost over Rs 1,000. However, JJ’s gynaecology department provides HIV screening at a nominal charge. “We perform voluntary testing for free on every pregnant woman, their husband and previous children.
If the woman is tested HIV+, we also offer CD4 tests for free, which until last year, we charged Rs 500 for. The state and union government has put a lot of money into AIDS and mother-child care that is paying off,” said Daver. | 
