No matter how many vows we make to annihilate AIDS from the world-map; how much we fuel our fight against it, and how loudly we talk in favor of AIDS-afflicted people; the fact remains standstill - despite many efforts - we haven’t been able to give AIDS-afflicted people their due place in the society.
How long this discrimination against HIV-afflicted people would go on, after all? Asking this provocative question, this time, comes another survey according to which HIV employees continue facing discrimination. As per new study, covering 478 HIV positive people in France:
• 20 admitted having faced discrimination.
• 149 lost their jobs while of working age
• Nearly one in three said their health had precipitated their job loss
• One in five were fired
• 12 % didn’t have their job-contracts renewed.
• Vulnerability to loosing job was four times higher among women when compared to men.
Matter undraped by the survey is just tip of the iceberg, as social discrimination against HIV-afflicted people is restricted not only to few countries but has swaddled the entire globe. It’s pity that in some places even doctors have been found stoking the flames of this discriminatory attitude towards HIV patients. So, it won’t be wrong to say that it has become part and parcel of the HIV-afflicted people around the globe, unfortunately. No matter, it is developed country like France –which the present survey tells about- or a developing country like India, AIDS stigma is continuously sticking to the lot of these people.
Nobody will come near me, eat with me in the canteen, nobody will want to work with me, I am an outcast here.
These words by an HIV positive Indian employee clearly show that how badly the stigma of AIDS is turning life into a hell for thousands of people.
Not better, is the condition of the female community; in fact, it is worst, as this survey itself uncovers. In many developing countries of Asia and Africa, life for an HIV positive woman is not less than a holocaust. As a woman with HIV/AIDS is considered not less than a whore and treated like a pariah! Following words of an HIV positive Indian woman well describe the situation:
My mother-in-law has kept everything separate for me-my glass, my plate, they never discriminated like this with their son. They used to eat together with him. For me, it’s don’t do this or don’t touch that and even if I use a bucket to bathe, they yell - ‘wash it, wash it’. They really harass me. I wish nobody comes to be in my situation and I wish nobody does this to anybody. But what can I do? My parents and brother also do not want me back.
So, the long and short of the matter is that our fight against HIV/AIDS remains incomplete or lopsided unless stigma associated with it is not wiped out fully. Our society will have to imbibe that sex is not the only reason behind HIV/AIDS proliferation, as other factors also contribute for its spread. For instance, recently a study revealed ‘China facing HIV/AIDS boom’ and main contributing factor for this boom was found not unsafe sex but drug abuse.
Comments
I am a heterosexual American male living with HIV for nearly 17 years. I can say here that despite all the rhetoric and false compassion, the stigma of living with this condition is worse now than ever. I work in a demanding technical environment, I am middle-class affluent, I am healthy, responsible, etc etc...
We are not Newsweek cover stories anymore, we have dropped off the American radar yet there are hundreds of thousands of us standing in the same grocery checkout line as you, dropping our kids off at the same schools, voting in the same booths. Shame on the masses who are so compassionate when a story comes on TV about cancer or ALS or any other life-threatening disease but allow that dark shadow to cross their features when AIDS is mentioned. Yes, it a fight against not AIDS but people with AIDS. The ”not in my backyard” mind-set is alive and well. Trust me, after all these years I can call my voice one of authority on this subject.......