IANS

Wellington, Dec 7: An HIV-positive man in New Zealand has allegedly injected his sleeping wife with his own blood so she would start having sex with him again.

The woman told the police that her husband also hoped it would prevent her from finding another man and leaving him, Sunday Star Times reported.

It is believed the man wanted to give her the disease so she would start having sex with him again.

The man, 35, admitted infecting his wife, in the first case of its kind in New Zealand.

The man has been remanded in prison awaiting sentence for wilfully infecting another with a disease, the media report said.

The 33-year-old described in court documents how her husband twice pricked her with a sewing needle laced with his infected blood as she slept and how she once caught him handling a syringe full of his blood.

The couple had protected sex until 2007, when the woman became too scared of contracting the virus and insisted on abstinence.

The woman told the court that in May last year, she discovered a sting-like mark on her left thigh.

"After having a shower I put some lotion on myself and I could feel pain on my thigh. When I looked at it, it was turning red like a circle, getting bigger and bigger," she was quoted as saying.

Later that morning, when she returned home from her nursing studies unexpectedly, she saw her husband in the bedroom with a syringe full of blood.

She said he pushed past her and walked away, refusing to talk about it.

Two days later "in my sleep I felt a prick on my leg. I got up... and I flicked the blankets... I looked at (the husband) and he was wide awake."

Later she found evidence of "blood sprinkles" on their duvet, which she says her husband tried to hide from her.

It was only in September, when her doctor suggested a test at a routine check-up, that she found she was HIV-positive, the Sunday Star Times reported.

The year before, the couple had been experiencing relationship problems, in part because of the woman's refusal to have sex with him since she feared she would contract the disease.

She had tested negative for the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) on at least four occasions before the year-long abstinence, so police were certain the needle stick had caused her to be infected.

In her evidence, the woman said when she confronted the husband with the diagnosis late last year he admitted dipping a "sewing needle" in his blood and pricking her with it.

"All he said (was) he was sorry. He said: `I used needles on you because I wanted you to be the same as me so that you can live with me and you won't leave me'," the woman was quoted as saying.

Police charged the man in October last year when the pair went to the local police station so the woman could make a formal complaint.

He is due to be sentenced in the Auckland High Court early next year.