Not all the clinic can prefer treatments on hiv-positive patients or any other infectious disease due to it’s necessary to have equipment within the laboratory to handle infection samples. In addition to having the corresponding permits granted by the health authority of each country.
Not all the clinics are equipped with lab equipment and in the gynecology part where HIV-positive patients could be treated. That’s the reason. And also, it’s about having it safe for the personnel, the doctors, nurses, and the embryologists; that’s one reason. Also, the second is that we never know what the situation is exactly with the HIV positivity of the person, and when they had the AIDS disease.
HIV has become a chronic infectious disease in developed countries where the patient can follow standard medical care and treatment. The main problem is not with HIV couples or with IVF treatment but with serodiscordant couples where the man is HIV positive, and his sperm sample could be transmitting HIV to both the mother and the baby.
In these cases, we would always recommend trying to get HIV undetectable in a blood test before treatment, and a sperm wash can be performed to avoid the risk of transmission. Only a few clinics can perform this sperm wash technique and safely perform IVF in serodiscordant couples.
Some clinics may not have all the equipment required in the lab to undergo treatment for patients with HIV. The most important thing is that whenever we are treating patients who are HIV positive, those patients are treated well by specialists in the infection and that their viral load is negative and their genital health is good.
Whenever we have to use sperm or eggs from someone who has HIV, we can perform some procedures in the lab to clean the samples to diminish as much as possible the risk of any transmission, or infection to the baby. Whenever we are speaking, especially about a male who is HIV positive when the female is not HIV positive, the technique is very accurate, and so far, several studies are showing that there has been no transmission of HIV using IVF when all things were done correctly and properly, in the lab. So this is a pretty safe technique. Then, after that, this pregnancy has to be followed up by a specialist who is completely aware of the situation as well. Follow up the protocols that are necessary for someone who might be at high risk of HIV if the partner is HIV positive.
