r Paul Marinescu has chosen to meet me on a cold winter\u2019s day in a room stocked with plants, fish tanks and two parrots singing in their cages. It\u2019s a room as lively as its incumbent\u2019s life. This grey-haired man with a gentle voice acts as father to 18 \u2013 two his own children and 16 HIV-positive orphans that he took in at a time when nobody wanted them.<\/p>\n
The official statistics show that during Romania\u2019s communist rule more than 10,000 children were infected with HIV. What happened is described as an epidemiological accident. What followed is something of a miracle \u2013 around 65 per cent of the children are still alive today. \u201cEverybody saw them as having no hope; doctors, parents, everyone actually expected them to die,\u201d says Monica Dan, a psychologist at the Romanian Anti-Aids Association who has worked in the field for 20 years. \u201cI\u2019m still astonished by how strong they are and by what many of them have accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marinescu\u2019s act of patronage saved the lives of a small group of children. Their story is also that of all Romanians with HIV, of managing to live with a once-lethal disease in a poor country recovering after the collapse of communism.<\/p>\n