In 1986, doctors worried about having to deal with the deadly HIV virus. Even then, Suniti Solomon decided to look for the virus among sex workers in Mylapore. Solomon who is credited with the discovery the first HIV cases in India, died at Chennai residence on Tuesday, having spent two decades doing pioneering work in the field of HIV/AIDS.

Solomon studied at the Madras Medical College and trained in pathology abroad while travelling with her husband. The couple returned to India in 1973 and Solomon returned to Madras Medical College as a professor.

In 1986, international medical journals were filled with updates about the deadly HIV virus that was killing thousands of sex workers and members of the gay community. Solomon found six cases of HIV among 100 sex workers in Chennai in that first round of testing in 1986, a finding that sent shockwaves through Tamil Nadu and India. Solomon herself described the experience as frightening. Besides, Solomon’s husband was worried about her working with HIV-infected patients, many of whom were drug-users and sex workers. “And I said, look, you have to listen to their stories and you wouldn’t say the same thing,”she told him. Among the first six patients was a 13-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and forced into sex trade.

In 1993, Solomon started the first voluntary HIV testing and counselling centre, YR Gaitonde Center for AIDS Research and Education. In news interviews, she described how the initial ground work was tough. “We had to erect huts in the Pondy Bazaar area and treat patients as no hospital came forward to admit HIV positive persons,” she recollected to The Hindu last year. Among the many problems she had to deal with as a doctor treating AIDS was the stigma around the disease.

Today, YRG Care has more than 300 people on staff and till 2009 had treated more than 14,000 patients. Solomon has often said that her biggest joys have come from testing children of HIV positive parents and finding them to be free of the virus.