The First HIV-Positive Kidney Transplant was Successful

Johns Hopkins Hospital has transplanted a kidney from an HIV-positive donor to an HIV-positive recipient successfully.

Prior to this medical breakthrough, people living with HIV have been thought to be unsuitable organ donors due to the medications people use to keep symptoms at bay which can cause kidney disease. However, in 2017, John Hopkins conducted research which concluded healthy HIV-positive people did not have a higher risk of developing kidney disease compared to unhealthy HIV-negative folks.

With the myth busted, Nina Martinez, a healthy 35-year-old, told the Washington Post before the surgery: “Society perceives me and people like me as people who bring death, and I can’t figure out any better way to show that people like me can bring life.” The recipient, who chose to remain anonymous, will no longer need to undergo dialysis treatments.

Woman Becomes Country’s First Living HIV-Positive Kidney Donor [VIDEO] “It’s the chance of showing people that I am just as normal as you,” says long-term survivor Nina Martinez. https://t.co/uSbao8zPbs #HIV

— POZ Magazine (@pozmagazine) March 27, 2019

With over a million people in the United States living with HIV, this has become a breakthrough for the stigma surround the disease and perhaps will expand the donor range for organs in the future.

President Trump plans on almost olbilerating the AIDs crisis by 2030. However the amount of money put into making this a reality does not add up to positive results, according to The New York Times,  and Trump’s track record so far with the LGBTQ community is not promising.