Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - April 26, 2009
Monica Laganparsad

She used to be a happy, healthy and sporty mum from the suburbs.

Now her once-athletic body is infected with HIV, her marriage is in tatters and she fears her three children will face the future alone.

She traces her misfortune to an accident scene in KwaZulu-Natal nine years ago when, she says, state paramedics contaminated her with the deadly virus.

This week the 52-year-old Johannesburg housewife asked the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg to rule that the provincial health department was to blame for her devastating illness - and to order them to pay her R2.1-million in damages.

The woman, who asked not to be identified to protect her children, knocked down a pedestrian with her car on the N3 at Mooi River in August 2000. She was treated on the scene for an open head wound after paramedics had handled the injured pedestrian, who died about 15 minutes after being hit.

The woman, who suspects the dead man had been HIV-positive, was diagnosed with the virus six weeks after the accident.

The court heard that the grandmother of two, whose husband was HIV-negative, had tested negative for the virus before the accident.

Expert witnesses said tests revealed she had been infected at the end of August or beginning of September - the time of the accident.

The defence, however, argued that the HIV status of the dead man could not be proved.

And one of the paramedics, who said he could not remember exact details of the accident, claimed he had pulled out a new set of gloves from his pocket after tending to the man.

The defence argued that the woman could have been infected during:

-- Dental surgery she had two days before the accident;

-- A hysterectomy she had in March 2000; or

-- Her treatment in hospital after the accident.

The defence's expert witness, Professor Alan Smith, head of virology at Durban's Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital, said it was impossible for the virus to have survived in the pedestrian's body after he died. He said the blood would have clotted during the time it took the ambulance to arrive, and the virus would not have been viable.

But the woman's witnesses - who included virologists Professor Desmond Martin and Dr Lyn Webber and infectious diseases expert Dr David Spencer - disputed this, saying the virus could still be "viable" in clotted blood and could have been transferred from the dead man's body to the woman.

The court heard no evidence that the man had been HIV-positive.

But the woman's advocate, Dana du Plessis, said the man's diary had contained contact numbers, in his own handwriting, for several HIV counsellors.

In court papers, Du Plessis argued that the defence's own witness, Smith, had conceded that the only two inferences to be drawn from the dead man's diary were that he was an HIV/Aids counsellor or was infected with the virus - and "there is no evidence that the deceased was a counsellor ".

Du Plessis claimed the paramedics had based their evidence on protocol and not their recollection of the accident.

Judgment on liability was reserved.

Outside court, the mother of three told the Sunday Times that her life had been "completely destroyed".

"For two years I was silent about my status," she said. "I eventually told my family... but my husband just couldn't deal with it at all."

Her motivation for the claim was not financial, she said.

"It's the principle of the matter. I would not want this to happen to anyone else. It is completely life- changing. And as much as there has been education around the disease, there is still this stigma attached to it," she said.

"But at least I am better off than many people with the virus."

laganparsadm@sundaytimes.co.za

090426
ST090404

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