A woman receives a heart transplant from a donor with HIV

The woman, who has been able to survive thanks to

, met the donor's family for the first time on Tuesday.

The transplant took place in April at the

(New York).

Doctors say this is the

a heart has been successfully transplanted from an HIV-positive donor to an HIV-positive recipient.

Miriam Nieves, who is now 62 years old, is married and the mother of three children and six grandchildren, she overcame a heroin addiction 30 years ago, but she contracted HIV.

Nieves, a former public relations professional who now lives in Westchester, north of New York City, went into

after suffering kidney problems.

Donor shortage

The shortage of organ donors is so severe in the United States that doctors at the hospital expanded their search to include HIV-positive donors and found a match.

There is no count of how many HIV-positive patients are among the more than 100,000 people on the country's waiting list for organ transplants.

In any case, HIV-positive patients

just like anyone else.

The donor was Brittany Newton, 30, a nursing assistant who worked with the elderly and died of a brain aneurysm, according to her family.

After her death, her family learned that she was HIV-positive and, as she was also an organ donor, doctors at Montefiore Moses Hospital successfully transplanted her heart and kidney to Nieves.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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