Essay on Impact of Stigma of HIV-AIDS in the South African Workplace

Ever since the first cases of what eventually came to be known as AIDS were diagnosed in the early 1980s, people with HIV/AIDS have been stigmatized. Over time, there have been many misconceptions about this disease. Even though there have been many discoveries, and treatments for HIV have improved over time, there are still many people who understand very little about this disease. This lack of understanding, along with fear, misinformation about how the disease is transmitted, and “moral” judgments made about the types of people who contract HIV, all have led to stigmatization of, and discrimination against, people who are living with HIV/AIDS. Understanding the stigmatization of people with HIV/AIDS is an important social justice issue because that stigmatization can result in people with HIV being insulted, rejected, gossiped about, excluded from family and social activities, fired, and even jailed. People with HIV are no different from people suffering from other chronic diseases. Instead of being alienated, they have a right to be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity.

Many individuals have this malnourished ideal that HIV/AIDS is a disease based on race. “AIDS; which has ravaged minority community in disproportionately large numbers, must be viewed as racial issue, the national commission member on AIDS said yesterday” (Priest). Years ago Yale University law professor Harlon Dalton said this about HIV/AIDS, “We cannot approach the AIDS problem in a color blind fashion” (Priest). With this being said we need to stop pointing fingers at blacks’ for the disproportionate factor of HIV in this country. And also stop pointing fingers at black homosexuals.

African American young men are infected with HIV at an alarmingly high rate in comparison to other races. The negative stigmas that is attached to having HIV in the black community, especially for men can be extremely detrimental and harmful to their overall health. One stigma that was attached to having HIV was death, death was at one time believed to be imminent, and now HIV is about restructuring their lives to face the future (Buseh, Kelber, Stevens & Park, 2008, p.409), yet they still battle other stigmas surrounded around HIV.

You cannot fire an employee who has HIV or AIDS because your customers have a negative attitude toward their employment. The ADA does not consider customer attitudes to be an undue hardship for the employer.

In today’s world we seem to put aside things that we consider no longer a threat. Well we are wrong to do this, because HIV/AIDS still affects over 5.4 million people that are walking around with this infection or full blown AIDS. They are friends, Criminals, neighbors, and even children attending school, etc. So, why do we think it is ok to not worry about a problem that does not have a cure, but only a life time of meds? Within this qualitative research method, we will explore Sexual risk, there or the Measures, Sexual risk, method, demographics, HIV/AIDS risk and may add other areas as they relate to this study.

People that have AIDS or HIV are more sensitive to sharing their health information than others because it could cost them their job. The people that contract these diseases are subject to scrutiny from the public. Since people automatically think that they are gay or lesbian but they are not the only ones that can get HIV or AIDS. When a person is revealed to have HIV or AIDS, he or she may be immediately discriminated against. HIV and AIDS require lifetime treatment that is very expensive to treat (HHS.gov, 2006). Unauthorized disclosure of a person’s positive HIV or AIDS status can lead to job loss; cancellation of insurance; evictions; and loss of friends and colleagues. The United States has developed a set of standards to keep a person’s HIV or AIDS status confidential as well as their other medical conditions. This is called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. All information is kept private from anyone except that person a

Since it is a disease contracted on one’s own, it is oftentimes seen as the fault of the person living with HIV or AIDS, therefore causing others to feel as though they should not be held responsible for such accomodation. Furthermore, there is a strong correlation between the stigma of HIV and other marginalized groups, such as queer and people of color. For a long period of time there was a general misconstrued idea that this disease only affected gay men or those who were economically disadvantaged and seen negatively, including minority groups.

But before we discuss ways in reducing HIV stigma, we should talk about what it consists of in Baton Rouge. Stigma can become a chronic stressor that leads to poor coping skills, inadequate self-care, and risky sexual behaviors (Johnson et al. 72). According to an HIV Infrastructure Study conducted by the Southern HIV/AIDS Initiative, they discussed what the HIV stigma consisted of in Baton Rouge. After a few interviews with employees in HIV/AIDS clinics and people living with HIV/AIDS, they stated that one of the main reasons why people refuse to go to a clinic to get HIV tested or delay testing is because they are afraid that people they know might see them getting tested and assume the worst from them (Reif et al. 12). People also don’t want to get tested because they fear the repercussions of getting tested positive for HIV and that their family or loved ones might shun them away if they were HIV-positive. People should not care about who is going to see them getting tested because they are being smart about taking steps in knowing their HIV status instead of waiting to show signs of AIDS infection and then it’ll be too late to get any treatment. Moreover, one study evaluating the HIV Stigma Scale had some key observations. Out of one-hundred and ten HIV-positive African-Americans that were picked for this study, some of the appalling statements they agreed with the most

The stigma towards HIV positive African-American women also exists within their own communities; unfortunately, this stigma towards these women does not encourage them to come out as HIV positive individuals. The problem with this fear is that it not only worsens the anguish for the sick individual, but also puts the people around the individual at risk. In “Social Context of Rural Women with HIV/AIDS,” authors Kenneth D. Phillips, Linda Moneyham, Sandra P. Thomas, Mary Gunther, Medha Vyavaharkar discuss the significance of the stigma felt by HIV positive women; the authors point out that the existing stigma causes these women to live in secret (2011). In order to keep their illness hidden, they would have to be maintain some form of normalcy with the people around them. Societal stigma plays an important role in the occurrence of HIV; it can be studied by examining the results of “stigma reduction” in African-American communities (Loutfy et al, 2015). HIV stigma reduction is difficult when dealing with African-American women because the stigma of sexism and racism cannot be ignored. One of the other effects of stigma is depression (Logie, James, Tharao, & Loutfy, 2012). In a “multi-method community-based research (CBR) study with Women’s Health in Women’s Hands (WLWH) across Ontario,’’ researchers also found that other forms of stigma like race and gender do correlate with the stigma felt by HIV positive African-American women

We first need to ask ourselves what stigma actually is. The government of Western Australia Mental Health Commission defines stigma as, “… a mark of disgrace that

It was interesting to learn that the young lady working for the clean works organization was formally an intravenous drug user by which she admirably commented on how the organization has changed her life for the better and by volunteering her time at clean works it has given her the opportunity to help others. While, I was in charge of running the clean works mobile unit I distributed educational brochures, contraceptives, and other items to reduce harm and increase client safety in the community. Taking into consideration that HIV is spread by having unprotected sex and/or sharing needles or syringes with someone who is infected, I felt very productive in knowing that I was providing valuable services to reduce the rate of infection. With my current knowledge surrounding the issue of HIV/ STD’s, the company was able to benefit from this service. At the end of the day, I met the Theoretical Base for Practice by reaching out to the community to educate and provide information that I have learned from research and in NURS 340. Previous learning experience on HIV and it’s prevalence in the community has heightened my awareness about the disease. Knowing the prevalence of HIV and how it is spread to others, is crucial in providing education to the

There was a study found that “White South Africans saw HIV/AIDS as a problem for

Fortenberry et al.[165] carried out the research to examine the relationships between stigma and shame with two types of STD related care for HIV testing and gonorrhea. Their study reveals that decreased likelihood of being tested for HIV and gonorrhea due to the stigma associated with HIV and the findings are consistent with widely held assumptions about the role of stigma as a barrier to STD related care. Further stigma rather than shame is a barrier to seek STD related care and highlights the possible difficulties facing intervention strategy to improve STD related care

South Africa’s labor supply is negatively affected by incidences of HIV/AIDS because of increased mortality and morbidity. AIDS decreases fertility rates and deaths from the disease ultimately lowers the population and labor force. Workers in key sectors of the economy such as mining and healthcare have been particularly affected. One study done by researchers, (R Elias, University of Botswana, personal communication, 2000), estimated that the mining workforce aged between 30 and 44 would see a decrease from 60% to 15% in 2015. South African Healthcare professionals are also heavily impacted, 20% of student nurses are infected with HIV [2]. There is a dearth of data on HIV prevalence in the public domain but a few studies have been done in high risk sectors like transport and mining.

There are HIV-related stigmas and discriminations that refer to the prejudice, abuse and negativity that is shown towards people living HIV and aids.in many countries with available data, over 50%of people have been said to have shown discriminatory attitude toward people living with HIV and AIDS. These stigmas have made people living with this