Friday, June 27, 2008

Stigma and Discrimination

Why there is so much fear,stigma and discrimination among some health care professionals towards HIV Positive persons?
You may think the main reason is fear of getting the infection.But there are other serious infectious diseases which are much more easily transmitted to health care workers like Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and Open Tuberculosis.Patients suffering from these diseases are usually not stigmatised or discriminated. Then why against HIV/AIDS?
This website summarises the reasons well.If you have any views or comment please be free to express it here.

1 comment:

Christine Harris said...

I have experienced first hand the stigma and discrimination of doctors, nurses and other staff and the sudden change in attitude and how they treat me upon their learning of my HIV status. This has been more than once and from Dermatologist to Gynecologist and every specialist inbetween. It is sad that as human beings we treat others worse than we treat an animal in need of medical attention.