2023-11-30 10:09:06
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Romuald is the sixth man in the world to have been cured of HIV. On France Inter, Thursday, this 51-year-old Franco-Swiss invites young people “to protect themselves because AIDS unfortunately is not yet over.”
Published on 11/30/2023 11:09
Reading time: 2 min Romuald, a Geneva patient cured of HIV, was the guest of France Inter on November 30, 2023. (RADIOFRANCE)
“I found it important to come out of the woods a little, in order to show that we can live very easily with treatment”confided Thursday November 30 on France Inter Romuald, sixth man in the world cured of HIV. This 51-year-old Franco-Swiss, nicknamed the “Geneva patient”, wants to speak in the media to “show that treatments have progressed a lot” these last years. “It’s not like it was years ago.”he assures.
Contaminated by HIV at 17, Romuald remembers that at the time “at school” and in his family “we didn’t talk regarding HIV and there was no prevention”. So when he received his diagnosis, he was “very little surrounded”. “My family didn’t know, at first I didn’t dare tell them”, he remembers. The young man therefore “found all alone with this diagnosis, without really knowing what to do or think regarding it”. He then learns to live with HIV and the treatments: “I was lucky enough to have very few side effects, if at all; I was at a time when treatments had evolved a lot”he says.
At the same time, Romuald developed an eye disease, unrelated, he assures, to his HIV status: “I had a retinal detachment and glaucoma”to the extent that “my eyesight has deteriorated terribly”, he explains. Today, the Genevan is “almost blind”.
In 2018, another blow, Romuald was diagnosed with leukemia. If he dares to laugh today by calling all these twists of fate a “cumulative mandates”the Franco-Swiss keeps the traumatic memory of what he describes as “the most difficult period of [sa] vie”. He must live in a “sterile room” and follow “very heavy treatments, chemotherapy, radiotherapy”. To destroy the cancer cells, Romuald must receive a bone marrow transplant to “renew the blood that was infected and [lui] restore clean cells, without cancer contamination”.
A transplant that he dares to describe as “beneficial for HIV, it was a blessing in disguise”. While his body rejects the transplant, his immune defenses strengthen, undoubtedly to the point of fighting HIV-carrying cells. “Everyone thought it wouldn’t work, and miraculously it still worked.”adds the Franco-Swiss who stopped treatment for HIV “for research”. Romuald insists on the importance of prevention in the fight once morest HIV, regretting that we “talks regarding it less and less”. He therefore launches an appeal, particularly to young people, inviting them to “protect yourself because AIDS unfortunately is not over yet”.
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