Pioneering HIV researcher Dr Suniti Solomon passes away

She was 75 and is survived by her only son Dr Sunil S Solomon who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. Her son flew to Chennai a few weeks ago to take care of the ailing mother, who was said to have been undergoing private treatment for pancreatic cancer for the last two months. “Her son was by her side taking care of her… the end came at 6.30 am today,” says Mr Ganesh of Y.R. Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education. Her husband Dr Victor Solomon, cardiologist, had died in 2006.

Dr Suniti took early retirement and started her organisation in November 1993 with just three people. She had to erect huts in the Pondy Bazaar area and treat patients as no hospital came forward to admit HIV positive persons, then. It was an arduous task that the team had achieved. She holds the honour of documenting the first evidence of HIV infection in the country in 1986 and she was instrumental in establishing the city’s first voluntary HIV testing and counselling centre and was the recipient of several awards for her meritorious service in the field of HIV - AIDS.

The HIV crusader founded the Y.R. Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education, a premier HIV/AIDS care and support centre in Chennai.

She had been the principal investigator in India of several pioneering international HIV research studies including the US National Institute of Mental Health’s multi-country HIV-STD prevention trial and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ HIV Prevention Trial Networks.