Woman wrongly tested HIV positive

CHOCHI HARYANA, NOV 14: KAUSHALYA had to terminate her five-month-old pregnancy after doctors at the Rohtak Medical College told her th...

CHOCHI HARYANA, NOV 14: KAUSHALYA had to terminate her five-month-old pregnancy after doctors at the Rohtak Medical College told her that she was HIV positive and she should not carry her pregnancy to the full term. That was in April 1997, a few days after her husband, Ranbeer Singh, had died.

Doctors at the medical college said Ranbeer Singh had tested HIV positive after an Elisa test. Now over two years later, on November 11, 27-year-old Kaushalya has tested HIV negative. The confirmatory Western Blot test conducted at a private laboratory by Joint Action Council Kannur 8211; a non-governmental organisation here 8211; which showed her to be HIV negative, has raised doubts about the correctness of the results of the test conducted on her dead husband by the Rohtak Medical College. Both Ranbeer Singh and Kaushalya were subjected only to the preliminary Elisa test and pronounced HIV positive.

Dr D R Arora, head of department of microbiology at Rohtak Medical College, said such a variation in results ispossible. Asked why he had then advised abortion after the Elisa test, he said he could not comment.

He, however, said that he had advised the woman to terminate the pregnancy as there was a 22 to 40 per cent chance of a newborn being infected. He said that the woman had not been forced to have an abortion, and if she had gone ahead with it, it was probably because she wanted to marry her brother-in-law Rohtas Singh.

He said that the department had conducted both an Elisa test and a Capillus test and she had tested positive. As is the practice among the medical college doctors, Doctor Arora said, he had advised Kaushalya that she should not disclose her condition to her family or she would be thrown out.Meanwhile, local newspapers carried a report on Kaushalya8217;s HIV status as a result of which the whole village began ostracising her as well as the family.

quot;They did not interact with us for at least six months. They did not let their children play with our children,quot; recalls Parem, Kaushalya8217;smother-in-law. quot;They did not let me draw water from the village well for many months,quot; said Kaushalya. quot;We had to make do with the hard water available here.quot;

Both Kaushalya8217;s present husband Rohtas and his brothers, Sahib Singh and Shamphul, were rejected by the families where they were to be married into after the news of their brother8217;s death was splashed in the newspapers.Her in-laws, however, had complete faith that the couple were not HIV positive. quot;We knew all along that she did not have any disease,quot; says Mangeram, her father-in-law and a well-to-do farmer in Chochi. They, in fact, went to the extent of getting Kaushalya married to their second son Rohtas a year after Ranbeer died, in keeping with the Jat tradition.The re-test has come as a victory for the family and a justification of their faith in their deceased son and his wife.

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Today, Kaushalya has a three-month-old baby, besides the three daughters from her first marriage.

quot;Tujhe aur tere bacche ko parmatma bhi nahi bacha sakega Even Godcan8217;t save you and your child was what doctors told Kaushalya,quot; Mangeram recalls. quot;But we knew that neither our son nor our daughter-in-law had AIDS.quot;Chochi villagers are yet to fully accept Kaushalya as being healthy and safe. They are non-committal and guarded in their responses. quot;The doctors know best,quot; that is what Kaushalya8217;s neighbour Nathiya says when told that Kaushalya had tested negative.

quot;She is so healthy. Maybe the newspapers had made it all up,quot; says a village school master, Ram Bhaj Joon. quot;Or the doctors went wrong.quot;