[brian]

Working with HIV - a nurse's story
DIANE Tose had always dreamt of becoming a nurse as a little girl.
But what she never imagined was that her burning ambition would take her on an emotional journey as a midwife for babies born with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
The 62-year-old started her career working in Dyer's Chemist, in Upper Church Street, and then trained as a nurse and midwife in Hartlepool General Hospital and then Sunderland General Hospital from 1960 to 1966.
But in 1967 a whirlwind trip to America with friend Anne Lowther sparked a career as a midwife - the last 16 years being taken up as a HIV/AIDS midwife at the New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Things weren't rosy when the former Golden Flatts and Elwick Road Seniors school pupil first started in her current post.
"I went to a hell of a lot of funerals in the first five years," she said.
For at the time, in 1989, the AIDS explosion was in full force with many women contracting the condition through sex.
Out of all the babies born to women who were HIV positive, one in four contracted it too and often went on to get full blown AIDS and die.
In fact, the first HIV baby Diane delivered only lived for 18 months before the fragile youngster was killed with a strong strain of pneumonia - a common illness in babies with the disease.
The mother had been tested for the virus after her husband became ill with AIDS while she was very heavily pregnant.
Luckily her other children tested negative and she is very much alive and regularly goes to Diane for check-ups.
In 1993 the hospital started a study and put pregnant women on a drug called AZT which helped suppress the activity of the HIV virus in the body.
Over the years, the scary statistic of one in four babies catching the disease waned to the current figure of one in 100.
Diane, who grew up in Seaton Lane, Hartlepool, said: "It was very hard for them. It still is.
"But back in 1989 it was like the death sentence if you were told you were HIV positive because there was no medication, no treatment.
"They think they are going to die and they feel so guilty that they're passing this disease onto their child."
She added: "In the beginning I used to be scared to death of telling a woman she was HIV positive. But I've grown used to it, I've had to...


Full Story: Working with HIV - a nurse's story [Hartlepool Today,UK]