AIDS is also one of the deadly diseases that plagues the human race. HIV is not contagious. This disease can spread from one person to another only through certain routes.Even if one of the husband and wife is positive and one is negative, the medicine that prevents the spread of the disease from one to the other is available today.Advanced treatment is now available to prevent the disease in unborn children.

Men with HIV can have safe pregnancies, and not pass on HIV/AIDS, as long as they have undergone sperm wash. HIV-positive men may be able to have children without passing on HIV-positive status to their wives or babies, thanks to a medical technique that separates the semen from the white blood cells and surrounding fluids, which is where the virus is more likely to be found if sperm is present. Because of that, a procedure called sperm washing is often used to help HIV-positive men have a healthy, HIV-negative child.

Also, for HIV-infected men suffering fertility problems, sperm washing and IUI may be a way of working around these issues. Men who are infected with HIV can become dads safely using assisted reproductive technologies. Today, medication treatments have advanced such that, thanks to new antiretroviral therapies, men and women infected with HIV can be parents by natural sexual encounters, without passing HIV.

Advances in HIV treatment and prevention allow couples living with HIV to get pregnant without the risk of passing the virus on to their children. People who are HIV-positive but taking antiretroviral drugs and keeping their infection under control - in particular, those with low viral loads, or undetectable levels of virus in the blood -- are highly unlikely to transmit the virus to their partners.

The risk of infant infection is minimal if a man goes through sperm wash, which may remove HIV/AIDS from his seminal fluid. Two-thirds of semen produced by all men with HIV do not contain detectable viruses. Sperm from men were tested for virus particles using a standard DNA-amplification technique called PCR (polymerase chain reaction). This procedure involved using a technique known as sperm washing, meaning that partners who were HIV-negative could be able to get pregnant safely through insemination. It would allow more men with HIV to become parents with no risk to their children.

Dr. M Niharika, Consultant Fertility Specialist, Kamineni Fertility Centre