US doctor’s “gutsy” move led to baby’s cure from HIV

US doctor’s “gutsy” move led to baby’s cure from HIV


Reuters; March 7, 2013

Dr Hannah Gay (University of Mississippi Medical Center & Reuters)

CHICAGO – The doctor who cured an HIV infected baby for the first time is happier talking to children than to adults and is finding all the attention since the news came out a little overwhelming.

Dr. Hannah Gay and colleagues Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga of the University of Massachusetts and Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported on the child’s case at a medical meeting in Atlanta on Sunday.

“The breakthrough has been exciting and I’m very hopeful that that’s going to lead to future research that will give us some answers,” said Gay, a Mississippi pediatrician and soft-spoken mother of four adult children.

But the attention is difficult for a woman “much more comfortable talking to children than adults,” said her husband, Paul Gay. “She didn’t anticipate this kind of explosion of attention.”

Dr. Gay, a 59-year-old native of Jackson, Mississippi, likes to spend time designing needle points, singing in her church choir and reading theology or medical literature when she’s not working 12-hour days treating patients, in a state with the nation’s highest poverty rate.

“She is the most unlikely person in the world to be getting this kind of international attention, really,” said Jay Richardson, her former pastor at the Highland Colony Baptist Church. “You don’t ever hear her talking about herself or trying to promote herself in any way. She’s a quiet, humble person. Extremely intelligent. Very committed to her faith. Very involved in her church. Very committed to teaching children the bible.”

Except for six years working in Ethiopia as a missionary, Dr. Gay has spent the bulk of her academic and professional career at the University of Mississippi, where she received her undergraduate and medical degrees and met her husband of 37 years. She has worked the better part of her career at the university’s medical centre serving the state’s youngest victims of HIV.

During that time, Dr. Gay has published several articles about ways to keep mothers from passing HIV infection to their babies and participated in the federally sponsored Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group, which studied the use of the aggressive treatment of children who are at high risk of infection.

Her daughter Ruth Gay Thomas says as an AIDS specialist her mother has had to fight the battles of her patients, overcoming access to healthcare and the stigma that comes along with being infected with HIV in the United States.

“She practices compassion and huge, unimaginable amounts of patience with her patients and their families,” Thomas said. “She really has to embody a whole lot more than just the smart doctor that knows the right medications to give.”