Mom's agony: Do I give my baby my HIV or do I watch her die?

Transplant surgeon Professor Jean Botha speaks to the media. From left: Health Minister Aron Motsoaledi, Botha, Dr Harriet Etheredge, a medical bioethicist from Department of Internal Medicine at Wits University, Caroline Tiemessen, research professor in the School of Pathology at Wits, and HIV clinician Dr Francesca Conradie.

Image: Supplied / Wits university Transplant surgeon Professor Jean Botha speaks to the media. From left: Health Minister Aron Motsoaledi, Botha, Dr Harriet Etheredge, a medical bioethicist from Department of Internal Medicine at Wits University, Caroline Tiemessen, research professor in the School of Pathology at Wits, and HIV clinician Dr Francesca Conradie.

Would you give your child HIV to save their life?

The question reads like a line from a Jodi Picoult novel, but for a South African mother, this was no fiction thriller – it was a life-and-death scenario.

The desperate mother, who is HIV-positive, decided the answer to that question is “yes”, and donated part of her liver to her HIV-negative baby who was dying of liver disease.

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