The chairperson of the Saudi Charitable Society for AIDS Patients has announced that it has succeeded in tying the knot for 86 women suffering from AIDS in the last five years. Dr. Sana Mustafa Felmban said: “All these married women have a medical record at the Ministry of Health and are subjected to regular checkups throughout the pregnancy period. Of these 79 women gave birth to healthy babies.” All the tests conducted on the newborns showed they were healthy with the exception of one woman who suffered from a miscarriage. Women who had AIDS were constantly screened so doctors could calculate the likelihood and optimum time for a successful pregnancy. “The number of the immune cells and proportion of the virus in the blood serve as a guideline for doctors to decide the ability of the diseased women to get pregnant. It also helps them to decide whether the birth will be normal or a C-section.” The number of people in the Kingdom who have contracted the disease since records began in 1984 has reached 16,334, she said. Of them 4,458 are Saudis, while the rest are non-Saudis. The ratio of Saudi women and men affected by the virus is 1:5. The rate of cases among Saudis fell by nine percent in 2010, Dr. Felmban said. “In 2011, 1,175 new cases of AIDS have been detected in the Kingdom, which include 493 Saudis and 682 foreigners,” she added. __
