Dr Suniti Solomon, who detected India’s first HIV case, dies at 76

Dr. Suniti Solomon who was part of the team that documented the first evidence of HIV infection in India in 1986 has died in Chennai on Tuesday morning, reports a leading English daily.

She was 76 and had been under treatment for two months for liver cancer, family sources said.

At a time when the worldwide journals had been writing a lot about the HIV outbreaks in the world in 1980s, it was the six blood samples she collected from female sex-workers sheltered at a government home in Mylapore that sent first shockwaves of the deadly virus in India. She died due to cancer and was 76.

James Robertson, Executive Director of Alliance India, reflected on her passing, “Dr Solomon stepped up to the challenge of HIV/AIDS long before it was fashionable”.

“The results of the ELISA test conducted at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, which was the lone institute to perform the test, showed that the samples had the Human Immuno Virus (HIV)”. She was also a professor of Microbiology at the Madras Medical College.

Dr Solomon’s experience covered a wide range of areas related to HIV/AIDS, from the biomedical to the socio-economic. Later, she voluntarily set up an HIV treatment and counselling center in Chennai. A pioneer in treating HIV patients since the 80s at a time when many physicians were reluctant, she founded the first voluntary HIV testing and counselling centre, Y R Gaitonde Center for AIDS Research and Education (YRG CARE), a premier HIV/AIDS care and support centre, in Chennai. “Whereas the first AIDS patients were often isolated, stigmatised and sometimes left unattended by doctors and staff in other hospitals, she listened to them, cared for them, and proved an example for the whole Indian medical community to follow”, the note said.

Solomon later became a member of several organisations like National Technical Team on women and AIDS, worldwide AIDS Vaccine Initiative-India, Scientific Committee of National AIDS Research Institute.

In 2009, the Ministry of Science and Technology conferred the “National Women Bio-scientist Award” on her. In 2001, she was given a similar award for her pioneering work on HIV/AIDS by the state run medical varsity.

Solomon’s discovery was even read out in the legislative assembly of Tamil Nadu, which congratulated her effort. “In 1993 when Dr Solomon created YRG, we produced our first anti-AIDS drug, AZT, and we have worked alongside her ever since”, it added.