By Adesida Adewumi MD
“Doctor you infected my child with HIV: I will sue you and your generation” These were the words of Pastor Adelokun (not real names) in the children out-patient clinic the day in question. As he was threatening brimstone,his wife, a nurse, was spitting fire. The threat was directed at me because I happened to be the one that attended to the same sick child three months ago when he was very sick and we had to give him blood.
Three months before, I was on call in our children emergency section when Pastor Adelokun brought in his sick three years old son. We diagnosed the child to have severe malaria with severe anemia (very low blood level). We needed to give the child blood and Pastor Adelokun said he would prefer to donate blood to his child because he didn’t want just anybody’s blood that would give his child HIV.
Medically speaking, the best practice is for family to donate to family.
We tested the senior Adelokun’s blood and it was free from every infection, including HIV. Mind you our Nigerian laboratory system can only detect HIV that is more than 2 weeks in the blood in most cases. If someone gets HIV today, the person enters what we call window period whereby if the person is tested for HIV, it will not show positive until like six to eight weeks when the body has produced enough antibodies. With the best of test kits it can be discovered as early as two weeks after infection. The risk is always there.
We subsequently transfused the boy with his father’s blood. We treated the malaria. The child got well and we discharged them.
After like 2 months, Adelokun and his wife discovered some rashes on the body of their child and the child became very sick again. The child was treated by the wife at home. He got better. A month after this, the child became sick again which necessitated this children outpatient clinic visit where the above fight ensued.
Pastor Adelokun caused a scene that day in the clinic because we did quick HIV test for the child from the side laboratory close to the clinic because of the suspicious rash. The test came out positive. Now the question was where could this child probably get HIV from? The only and one obvious source was the blood transfusion three months back.
Pastor Adelokun was furious because according to him we might have used another person’s blood instead of his that he donated, which was negative.
Husband and wife were ready to kill us, if possible, that day. After a while the situation was calmed by the senior doctors in the clinic.
Then next plea with Adelokun was to allow his HIV test to be repeated. He confidently agreed to this because he was so sure he was negative but to everybody’s surprise his test came back HIV positive.
Now there was silence everywhere.
The question running through everybody’s mind was where did pastor with HIV negative nurse wife get HIV from. The wife was in shock. Out of fear and disbelief she too volunteered to be tested. She too came out to be HIV positive.
Utter confusion. She was in denial.
Even though she was a nurse, at risk of HIV by the virtue of her work, she had never had needle prick at work, no blood splash on the face or anything that could put her at risk of contracting HIV.
Moreover, she did her HIV test three months prior at work. She was negative. The utter confusion continued that day until Pastor Adelokun opened up to us all on what happened in their home almost four months earlier; like a week before the child’s first sickness.
He said: ” I think Satan has succeeded in destroying my life eventually. I am afraid this may be as a result of the sin I committed like four months ago. All my life I have been faithful in serving God and being faithful to my marital oath ever since I got married 10 years ago. Four months ago, doctor, when my wife went for her nurse night shift and I was home alone with our new house girl. This girl has been tempting me every night whenever my wife went for night duty. She would wear transparent night gowns and sit in the sitting room with me. I did all to resist this for a while but four months ago I crashed. Doctor, I slept with her. I don’t know but I think I might have gotten this HIV from her because this is the only way I have erred I could remember”
There was silence everywhere.
Our most senior doctor requested for the house-help to come to the hospital for her own HIV test. She came, tested and she too was HIV positive.
In the eerie silence that followed, everybody involved was sobbing deeply, except the sick three years old boy, who was too young to understand what was going on.
I was overwhelmed. I felt like crying. I had to take a walk to my car in the park. After five hours, the matter was finally resolved.
House-girl gave Pastor HIV, Pastor Adelokun gave wife by sex, and child by blood transfusion.
I had been exonerated. My licence was safe one more time, because this is the commonest threat doctors receive daily.
As I was walking towards my car that day a lot of lessons came knocking at the door of my brain. Below are the lessons:
* Taking house girls to your home without conducting medical tests for them to be sure they are healthy is not too good an idea.
* I equally learnt that Pastor Adelokun was able to succumb to this temptation more because of the absence of his wife, his lack of self-control and discipline, and a refusal by him and wife to set a code of conduct (including dressing).
Much as I won’t blame the nurse wife for being a shift worker, generally I just learnt from this story that husband and wife should remain together as much as possible. This can really help in resisting this kind of temptation together.
* I want to believe that if Adelokun had told his wife long ago the temptation this house-girl was putting him under, may be he would have escaped this nightmare for himself and his family. Fighting your battle alone after marriage is wrong. This is never the purpose of God for marriage.
* Our health-care laboratory system needs more improvement and very importantly, also, is for a doctor to document intoto all you do for your patient because threat may come beckoning for your licence someday.
* Dr Adewumi, works in the Department of Family Medicine, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, AKTH, Kano, Nigeria. He can be followed on his page on Facebook “FROM INSIDE MY CONSULTING ROOM “; and also his health page on Instagram @doctorhealtheducation.