Adi mai, Living with HIV, and her baby is fine

Adi Mai

You’ve heard the horror stories about malpractice at the Northern Regional Hospital, but there’s one woman who was probably lucky that she wasn’t treated at the hospital. Adi Mai is living with HIV and got unexpected news that she was pregnant in February. Mai suffered complications in the first months of her pregnancy and feared that the infection would spread to her unborn child. But when she requested a c-section at hospitals in both the Corozal Hospital and the Northern Regional, she was denied the surgery despite a policy by the Ministry of Health that HIV patients should be provided with C-section. Luckily, Mai was assisted to travel to El Salvador where she underwent surgery. She told News Five that she is going public to prevent recurrence of such incidents with mothers, who may not be as fortunate.

Adi Mai, Living with HIV

“I think that we, as persons living with HIV positive, being female and wanting to be mothers, I think they’re supposed to give us the C-section to prevent any chances, any chances at all because the risk that I have was that for four months, I was bed ridden. I couldn’t eat, I was vomiting, I even had diarrhea. That made me think that probably the baby didn’t get the medication that I was drinking so that made the thing worse.  During that course, since I began working with this organization REDCA from El Salvador and C-NET here at Belize, I learned a lot about mother to child transmission. Even though I was drinking my medication, I was afraid. I was afraid and so I began asking for a C-section to be done both on the part that I was afraid my baby would come out positive and the other one was the over issue that probably HIV positive mothers should not have babies. So I asked for that and I was practically told that I had to have some difficulties in order for a C-section to be done on me. But this organization, REDCA offered me the C-section at El Salvador and I thought it was a good opportunity to prevent any transmission to my baby so I accepted it and I had my baby at El Salvador. But here at Belize, I went to my nurse and asked for a C-section; I went to my gynecologist, they told me that they would perform the C-Section only if I had complications. And even the doctor told me that that would be the reason if I had a c-section. I tried and I struggled for it and thank God and thanks to the organization I was offered it right there. The first time I was diagnosed, it was terrible but then going through support groups, that made me more strong. Discrimination will not stop; whether we have HIV, whether we have any other illnesses, it will not stop. So basically, that doesn’t hurt me at all and the fact that probably this could help other woman that has HIV, that we have the right to give birth even though we have that status. The thing is that we need the help and the support from other people to do it.”

Mai’s baby is now three months old and so far all tests for the HIV virus, both in Belize and El Salvador have been negative.