This Doctor Did More For AIDS Victims In India Than Anyone Else, And We Salute Her Efforts

Lives of people affected with AIDS or HIV isn¡¯t an easy one, as not only do they have to deal with a disease that is killing them physically, the stigma that comes with the name of the disease affects one mentally every day.

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However, today, the disease is in control and stable with proper care being delivered to the patients, along with free checkup and medication. All this was possible thanks to Padma Shri Suniti Solomon, who was adamant to do something about it.

Getting introduced to the field of medicine

Suniti Solomon was born in a Maharashtrian family, residing in Chennai, she got interested in the field of medicine from the health officer who used to yearly visit them for home vaccinations. She eventually went to study in Madras Medical College and later trained in pathology in the US, UK as well as Australia.

However, she returned with her husband to India in 1973 because she felt that India needed her more. She went on to complete her doctorate in microbiology and joined as a faculty at the Institute of Microbiology in Madras.

Detecting first cases of HIV in India

Around 1983 HIV surfaced as this deadly and life-threatening disease that was spreading across the US. Solomon was following the research literature on this and decided to conduct a series of test on 100 sex workers in Chennai in 1986.

Out of 100, six of them were found to be HIV positive -- the first-ever reported case of HIV in the nation. She sent them to Johns Hopkins University for a cross-verification, only to receive a similar result. Ever since then, she completely dedicated her life to serving and eradicating India from HIV.

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She also contributed in international research studies for HIV including a multi-country HIV/STD prevention trial at the US National Institute of Mental Health, the HIV Prevention Trials Network run by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an NIH study of the HIV stigma in health care settings in South India, among others.

Destigmatising HIV In India

By the time people got to know about the novel virus and how it usually transmitted between bodies, people had already stigmatised patients affected with HIV, that actually made it difficult for them to seek help and talk about it openly.

Even Solomon¡¯s husband was against the idea of her working with HIV patients, to which she made him understand stating that one needs to listen to their stories and they wouldn¡¯t say the same thing again. She was the first to talk openly about it and destigmatise it, claiming that what was killing people more than the disease was actually the discrimination.

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Stabilising HIV in India

She set up an AIDS Resource Group in India, that was responsible for running research on HIV as well as offering social services. They were also the first to offer an all-inclusive facility for curing HIV/AIDS in India. She further established Y R Gaitonde Centre for Aids Research And Education in 1993 for voluntary care and testing of HIV patients, which till this date is being run by his son, Sunil Solomon. She was also crucial in educating doctors and patients for HIV.

Matchmaking people with HIV

Through Y R Gaitonde Centre for Aids Research And Education, she also initiated a matchmaking forum for people affected with HIV in the year 2001, where instead of caste and religion, they relied on the CD4 level in their blood -- a marker of immunity that determines how sick a patient is. Till this date, the institution has been responsible for matching over 32 couples.

Suniti Solomon passed away on July 28, 2015, after losing her battle with Pancreatic cancer that was detected just a few months before her death. She was awarded Padma Shree posthumously for her contribution in the field of medicine in 2017.