Being diagnosed with HIV has not deterred some couples from wanting to be biological parents, even with the strong likelihood of passing on the virus to their offsprings or leaving them orphaned at a young age.

Four years ago, Simone was diagnosed with the virus, shortly after giving birth to the last of three children. The children, ages from five to 16, have not been diagnosed with the disease, so far.

Now Simone’s current partner, who is not the children’s father but who is also HIV positive, wants to get married and have children. She wants to do it.

“Yes, I want to have another child because I have the right to have a child and I don’t think I am going to die right now because I am taking my medication,” she says.

Her decision to have more children is based mainly on the fact that her partner does not have any of his own, Simone explains.

“He would like to have a child, and this is the only chance he has to have one and I would give it to him,” she tells the Sunday Observer, adding that the only thing delaying the process just now is the fact that she is currently studying.

She believes she knows enough to protect her baby when she gets pregnant, having breast fed her last child for five months without passing on the infection.

“How the child catch it is if you are breast-feeding and giving them the formula at the same time, the formula disturbs the child’s stomach and allows the virus to get into the blood stream,” she believes.

Simone was first diagnosed with the disease after her child’s father, who contracted syphillis – a less lethal sexually transmitted disease – encouraged her to do the test.

She says having HIV does not mean that she should stop having sex, even though now she uses a condom all the time.

“At first, you might be afraid because you might feel that ‘if I have sex again I might infect someone or myself’, but after being educated on what to do, then shop don’t lock because we are all humans,” she argues.

She says there are many other persons who, like herself, are looking forward to marriage and family life even after being diagnosed with the killer disease.

“I have a friend and when her HIV status became known, the whole community knew and this guy heard everything and yet the two of them are married now for a year-and-a-half and he is not HIV positive,” she says.

These are not isolated cases, says Dr Tina Hylton-Kong, medical director of the Epidemiology Research Training Unit at the state-run Comprehensive Clinic at Slipe Pen Road in Kingston, confirming that many HIV-infected persons are still getting pregnant.

“We have lots of pregnant women whose partners don’t know that they are HIV positive, even up to their third pregnancy,” she tells the Sunday Observer.

In the past year, up to June, 711 children have been infected with HIV/AIDS.

Dr Hylton-Kong said statistics have shown that paediatric AIDS deaths account for about eight per cent of the total deaths in children and is the leading cause of death in children ages 1-4 in Jamaica. An estimated 280 HIV-infected infants are born yearly in the country.

John, who was diagnosed with the disease five years ago, says he still continues to have sex with his partner, who remains uninfected.

He says his only reason for not planning for a child just now is that all his children are already grown and not because of his HIV status.

“I am still having sex, but I now have to use a condom because me no have a girlfriend for myself, is borrow me borrow one and me don’t want no problem,” he says, without elaborating on what he means by ‘borrow’.

He dislcoses that he has been with his partner for 10 years at the same time she was with her steady boyfriend. Fortunately for them, he says, she is still negative after several HIV tests.

“When me find out and me tell her, it was kind a hard for her because she a say what she a go tell har gentleman because she was having unprotected sex with me up until that time,” he recalls.

John is not opposed to HIV persons having children, an occurrence which, he says, happens quite often. He was, however, adamant that in such cases it is better for both partners in the relationship to be HIV positive.

“If I am going out there to start a serious relationship, the person must be positive because if you don’t you will have problems because you will never be able to relate to that person,” he argues.

-browni@jamaicaobserver.com