CTV Your Morning: “New Short Doc Raising Awareness for Pregnant Women with HIV”
Second-year ob-gyn resident Aditi Sivakumar was featured on a segment of CTV’s Your Morning, broadcast on March 23, 2026. She spoke about the short documentary she produced, “Positive Journeys: Pregnancy, Strength and Living Well with HIV,” which launched on International Women’s Day.
Every year in Canada, there are upwards of 250 pregnant women living with HIV. Of the infants born, 98 to 99 per cent are HIV negative.
The video follows one pregnant woman’s interaction with the Positive Pregnancy Program (P3), a clinic at St. Michael’s Hospital headed by Mark Yudin, a professor in the department; Yudin appears in the video and collaborated in its production. The video interviews those who work at the clinic about the challenges faced by pregnant women living with HIV.
Sivakumar uses the isolation we all experienced during COVID-19 as a point of comparison.
“People with HIV, many of them have had this feeling for decades on end,” she said. “People are worried that they’re not going to be examined, that they’re not going to get cared for, that individuals will be afraid to be part of their medical team and medical care.”
Compounding this, added Sivakumar, is the fact that many of these women are new to Canada, with low financial and social capital, and are from marginalized demographics.
The P3 clinic aims to provide more than just medical expertise, said Sivakumar.
“It doesn’t just look at how you treat them medically, but how do you find them housing supports? How do you find them employment support? How do you help integrate them into society?”
Sivakumar mentioned this project follows her passion for combining media and medicine, citing a conversation with TIFF representatives as a significant moment in her thinking:
“I remember they said, ‘Nothing moves people more than a story.’ And I think that is so true.”
Read how Sivakumar funded the doc
