First living HIV-positive donor provides kidney for transplant in medical breakthrough
Source: The Washington Post
By Lenny Bernstein March 28 at 9:00 AM
Surgeons at the Johns Hopkins Hospital have transplanted a kidney from a living HIV-positive donor to an HIV-positive recipient, a medical breakthrough they hope will expand the pool of available organs and help change perceptions of HIV.
The donor, 35-year-old Nina Martinez, and the recipient, who chose to remain anonymous, are recovering in the hospital after Monday’s surgery, doctors said. The recipient no longer needs kidney dialysis for the first time in a year.
The procedure is another step in the evolution of HIV — considered to mean certain death when the AIDS epidemic began in 1981 — and an advance for the 1.1 million people who carry the virus. Medication now can suppress the infection to undetectable levels in many people, and President Trump recently vowed to end transmission of it in the United States by 2030. But stigma still remains.
“Society perceives me and people like me as people who bring death,” Martinez said in an interview Saturday before the operation. “And I can’t figure out any better way to show that people like me can bring life.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/first-living-hiv-positive-donor-provides-kidney-for-transplant-in-medical-breakthrough/2019/03/28/29894312-50bc-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html
Martinez will speak at a press conference today, at 1 p.m.
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