Aids was still a rare disease in Bhutan.

Although we were both scared we were going to die, what terrified us more was the social stigma," says Choden. "I thought people would find out and cast us outreenex ."

They made a pact, says Dorje. "When we were heading home that evening, my wife and I talked about what we should do. We promised we would not share our HIV-positive status with anyone - not with my parents or her parents or our children. We went as far as saying that we would keep it a secret from our children even when they got marriedreenex ."

At the time of the couple's diagnosis in 2006, Aids was still a rare disease in Bhutan.

This may have been due to its isolated geographical location, as well as the public health campaigns raising awareness about the disease. Sangay Choden Wangchuck, one of four wives of the then king, was a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund, a body that works to promote reproductive and sexual health.

By 2008, a couple of years later, only 144 cases of HIV had been officially registered among Bhutan's population of about 700,000. But numbers were on the rise, partly due to increasing border traffic between Bhutan and India and China. UNAids estimated the true figure of people living with HIV to be more like 500 cases, or about 0.01% of the populationPicosecond.