Essay On Stigmatization Of People With HIV/AIDS

HIV has affected people all across the world. HIV comes with physical and mental symptoms. The body symptoms include skin flaking off, being dry, skin peeling off (Saliba 23) , fingernails falling off (32), and weight loss (14). Mentally it is hard to sleep, people become weak, and are tired all the time (23). People all across the world are infected with this disease, and the problem with this is the fact that most do not even know they have it. The most people who are infected each year are African Americans, gays, or bisexuals. 10,315 African Americans were infected in 2015. The U.S.A. has estimated about 1.1 million are infected with the disease. Equally to about 12,333 deaths happened in 2014 from AIDS related diseases, and 6,721 deaths from AIDS directly. Although there are a large amount of people getting infected, on the other hand eighteen percent of the population with HIV is declining since 2008-2014 (“U.S. Statistics”). In the world about 33.2 million people worldwide have HIV, with 22.5 million people in sub Saharan Africa are living with this condition, one out of nine people who live in South America have HIV or AIDS (Saliba 8).

According to estimates and numbers provided by the CDC, about one and a half million people 13 years of age and younger is HIV positive. Demographics also show that almost 20% of people who are infected do not know they have the virus. The CDC estimates that now every year, there are about 50,000 new cases diagnosed (2013). At risk groups include gay men, bisexual people, and African Americans (CDC, 2013). Young African American males are at greatest risk for contracting HIV among various ethnicities and races (CDC, 2013).

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.

In human societies there will always be issues or problems that occur which cause some form of reaction from those who feel that their values or societal equilibrium is being threatened. Stanley Cohen and Jock Young led the way in explaining the notion of moral panics and how they are formed and their consequences on society. There have been numerous of these moral phenomena over the years, which have gripped society in a vice lock of terror and more often than not, ignorance. This essay will discuss the concept of the moral panic and look at the case of HIV/AIDS which caused a huge conflict of morality within society. This essay will also analyse the failings of health organisations, politicians, and the

According to recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 1.2 million individuals in the United States have HIV (about 14 percent of which are unaware of their infection and another 1.1 million have progressed to AIDS. Over the past decade, the number of HIV cases in the US has increased, however, the annual number of cases remains stable at about 50, 000 new cases per year. Within these estimates, certain groups tend to carry the burden of these disease, particularly the gay, bisexual, and men who have sex with men (MSM) and among race/ethnic groups, Blacks/African American males remain disproportionately affected. (CDC)

With the help of government programs such as the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) as well as multiple other methods of sociological research and social justice work, there have been shifts toward better understanding this disease, those which are living with it, and the societal impact one’s own prejudices can make toward an individual living with AIDS. However, discrepancies still exist within how to properly educate others on the disease, how to recognize it as a disability within the context of our society, and how we must reconcile stigmas that play a role in plaguing any sort of positive conversation on the topic. With well-informed citizens on the issues of HIV and AIDS patients, not only can we reduce the stigma associated with the illness, but also work toward medical advancements that assist those living with HIV in a nondiscriminatory manner.

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 early days of the AIDS epidemic challenged the cartesian nature of biomedical culture. With its emphasis on empiricism, the superior biomedical mind could normally make sense of the inferior patient’s bodily concerns. In the early 80s, though, the scientific method seemed to be failing with AIDS, with no clear biological etiologic agent being identified, and rumors circulated. As the biomedical mind struggled to define and categorize AIDS, the moralistic nature of medical authority revealed itself. Instead of pathology residing in the biology of a patient, it appeared to transcend the patient’s biology and reveal deviant sexual behavior. Instead of being able to treat or study the disease, the diseased bodies were quarantined. Even when it was understood that AIDS had a viral cause, biomedicine’s quarantining practices became subtler, but still perpetuated the social stigma of AIDS patients. In this essay, I examine the nature of AIDS stigma through the lens of two biomedical professionals’ memories of the first decade of the epidemic. One such professional is Dr. M. Robert Hill, M.D. He is a retired internist of 68 years, who used to work at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in Town and Country, Missouri, and treated several AIDS patients before antiretroviral therapy was discovered. The other ethnographic source is Dr. Daniel Hanson, a current Immunology lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis, who was completing his second postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at

Human immunodeficiency Virus also known as HIV is a sexually transmitted disease. It attacks your body's immune system. The virus destroys CD4 cells, which help your body fight diseases. HIV damages your immune system and it leads to acquired immune deficiency syndrome also known as AIDS. AIDS is the final stage in HIV, and it’s a disease where severe loss of the body's cellular immunity occurs. The disease lowers the resistance to infection and malignancy. Anyone can get HIV/AIDS. Men, women, and children, of all different races and descents can get infected with the virus. People who are gay or straight can also be infected with HIV/AIDS. There is currently no cure for HIV/AIDS. HIV treatments may reduce

HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999,

The most recent UNAIDS/WHO estimates show that, in 1999 alone, 5.4 million people were newly infected with HIV [9].

Most of them do not know they carry HIV and may be spreading the virus to others. Here in the U.S., nearly one million people have HIV infection or AIDS, or roughly one out of every 250 people. At least 40,000 Americans become newly infected with HIV each year, and it is estimated that half of all people with HIV in the U.S. have not been tested and do not know they are carrying the virus.

According to the CDC, In the United States the prevalence of HIV in adolescents from age 13-24 is estimated to account for 22% of all new cases (cdc.gov 2016). Of those cases, the most new cases occurred among gay and bisexual males. Furthermore young African American and Latino gay and bisexual males have been affected in higher numbers than any other group. Addressing HIV in our youth entails multiple avenues to curtail the rising numbers. Including, but not limited to, education, tools for risk reduction, healthy decisions, effective communication, as well as treatment and care. How did our nation’s youth reach this point? How can change be implemented? The following will discuss the trends and statistics on the prevalence of HIV in our youth as well as the efforts being made to decrease the numbers of newly reported cases.

are just a couple out of many that happen nowadays in various countries, but especially in the third-world ones. Most of such cases of discrimination by society occur because of the fear and the lack of knowledge about the disease. Usually, the community uses misconceptions to advocate their actions. Many people base their reasoning on moral and religious beliefs such as a person with HIV/AIDS did something immoral such as promiscuity or ‘deviant sex’ and deserves to suffer from the disease (Fredriksson 2). However, what community does not realize is that not all people who have AIDS did something immoral. Someone might have gotten it from a parent, someone might have received it by accident through blood, someone might been engaged in sexual activity with a HIV-positive person but was not aware of that. Things like that happen very often. So, now these victims have to suffer from “extreme rejection and alones” from community (Kinnier 472). Many of the patients are being fired from jobs and thrown out of their apartments (Kinnier 472). The harshest consequence is being rejected and discriminated by family and friends. According to UNAIDS all these discriminations lead to the emotional problems like depression, low self-esteem, and despair (Cao 519).

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