This week began with excitement, as the public interest litigation (PIL) Arlene and I did research on, was going to be heard in High Court. This case dealt with a PLHA who was denied dialysis treatment at a government hospital because he is HIV positive. He then had to get treatment at a private hospital, and incurred considerable out of pocket expenses.

While the PIL is crucial in securing a legal remedy which will be useful to future PLHA in obtaining dialysis treatment, the client himself does not receive compensation. As such, Arlene and I conducted research into whether this client could receive compensation from the Consumer Protection Act Board. Unfortunately, because the hospital which refused treatment was governmental, we found out that the client did not meet the definition of ‘consumer’ and as such, could not avail himself with this act. As such, the client cannot obtain a monetary remedy, though he has incurred considerable debt in procuring a kidney dialysis, when this should have been free in the first place!

The difficulty of practicing law in the health field is that legal intervention is often too late and of little effect by the time the damage is done. One key example is the case of a pregnant woman in Bhopal who was referred from hospital to hospital WHILE she was hemorrhaging, and died as a result.

Because of this limited ability to grant tangible monetary results to the client, families are often very reticent to come forward with their stories. In fact, Arlene and I have been making many calls to various positive networks to find a family who is willing to share their story so that we can file a PIL on maternal mortality, but we have not been successful. Though we have sent out the call for events such as this to be reported to HRLN, no individuals have come forward. This is understandable as the families have already lost a mother/daughter/sister/aunt, fear the public shame which will be associated with a woman’s positive status, and have nothing tangible to gain from the litigation.

In order to break the silence on this issue, Arlene and I have compiled a power point presentation regarding maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS which will be presented at a training session on Maternal Mortality, to be held in Rajasthan next week. Hopefully this presentation will bring this issue further to light with all the positive networks, who will then coordinate at the grass roots level with affected persons, in order to conduct further research on the lived experiences of pregnant women with HIV/AIDS.