UAE doctors find delivering news of HPV a tough job

Many doctors have seen couples lose their temper with each other when they find out and some have even gone to the extent of filing for a divorce.

ABU DHABI // Telling a person that their partner has infected them with an STD is one of the hardest parts of a gynaecologist’s job, particularly when they are informing both together, doctors say.

Dr Vera Beni, a specialist obstetrician/gynaecologist at women’s hospital Brightpoint Royal, deals with such situations each day.

She, like many in the profession, has seen couples lose their temper with each other when they find out and some have even gone to the extent of filing for a divorce.

“It’s a very sensitive topic. Patients come with their husbands and ask me, ‘what is this, how it’s transmitted’ and many other questions.

“STDs can affect a person’s private life a lot. Some ask if they need to tell their partner - what about their company? Does it mean that their partner was unfaithful?”

Dr Ehab Riad, of Well Care Medical Centre, said that many patients give fake names, numbers, addresses and pay in cash.

“They are scared that their employers might know and they would lose their jobs,” he said.

Many women, Dr Beni said, transform their lives after a diagnosis, adding that she has had cases where women break down in tears, lamenting their promiscuous lifestyle after being told they have an STD.

However, Dr Nazura Siddiqi, a specialist gynaecologist at Bareen International Hospital said that HPV is completely different from other STDs and should not be grounds for divorce.

“It is wrong because sometimes the virus can live inside your body for many years. The presence of HPV does not mean that your partner has been unfaithful or is having multiple sexual partners,” she said.

Dr Siddiqi said that it was foolish to assume that men have not been sexually active before marriage.

“The world is different. Just because a religion says something is wrong doesn’t mean that people are not doing it,” she said.

Dr Saad Ghazal-Aswad, head of the gynaecological oncology department at Tawam Hospital in Al Ain, said that he found up to 90 per cent of his female Emirati patients to be accepting of their partner’s previous sexual relations. “Their main problem would be if he was having any relations now, after their marriage,” he said.

Dr Aswad has a unique approach to informing a couple that they have the HPV virus.

“In more than 16 years of working at the hospital, I have never said it was an STD,” he said.

“We help people but we don’t ask too many questions, to not implicate them, because according to the law, you may face three months imprisonment or deportation for sex outside wedlock.”

If asked what the problem is caused by, Dr Aswad tells them “that it’s an HPV and if they ask if it’s an STD then I turn the question around to them and I ask, ‘what did you read?’”

“You have abnormal cells that need to be treated, full stop,” he said.