I read interesting and different approaches of understanding illness in social context in this group, which made me think about the health care issues and social responses in my country.
It’s worth pointing out, that after collapsing Soviet Union Georgia experienced a lot of changes (and many of them in positive way) in different fields, including health care system. However, the major problem in the health system remains due to the lack of health promotion programs and low level of knowledge, which leads to inadequate response from people to different diseases. For instance, people living with HIV/AIDS come across stigma and discrimination and mostly are being treated unfairly, which makes their life far difficult compare to other developed parts of the world.
In case of Georgia there are two main reasons, which identify public negative attitude and prejudice against the people with HIV. The first reason can be seen as fear of casual transmission and refusal of contact with people living with HIV/AIDS, caused by low awareness and incorrect information about this disease. I know people, who are afraid of becoming infected with HIV by noninvasive contacts like touch, kiss or even speak with people who are HIV positive. Therefore they ignore them who used to be their friends and relatives before. The second reason, which seems to be more social, is negative perception of HIV/AIDS in terms of morality-related attitudes. There are a lot of people, especially in senior population, who believe that people with HIV should be ashamed and isolated from society.
On the other hand increasing number of HIV/AIDS cases in Georgia requires effective response from health care system and from society as well. And under the effective response I don’t mean only relevant prevention and treatment of disease, but building more supportive and non-discrimination environment for people living with HIV.
As many of you are from developed countries and have working experience in health care system, it is interesting to hear your thoughts and advice on this current problem.