GPH: HIV/AIDS -related stigma in developing countries: example of Georgia.

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.

Re: HIV/AIDS -related stigma in developing countries: example of Georgia.

by Deleted user - Friday, 5 October 2012, 2:57 AM

The same problem has been seen in Mozambique, many patients experience psychological and social distress as a result of negative judgement connecting the infection by HIV to immoral sexual behaviour (homosexuals and prostitutes) and anti-social behaviour (intravenous drug-takers), ignoring other risk factors such as accidental exposure (health workers). Althought the NHS provides antiretroviral therapy for free, many HIV-infected assume the infection when are really sick. Discriminatory act can also be seen when they try to find a job because the laws to protect them are not clear, in other words just recognises sex and race discrimination. This leads to emotional pressure sometimes suicide

Re: HIV/AIDS -related stigma in developing countries: example of Georgia.

by Vanessa Laura Chiappa - Sunday, 7 October 2012, 11:53 AM

Hi Nino, I found your post really interesting and extremely resonant with what I’ve learnt about the effect of stigma and what I’ve heard from my experiences talking to patients on the wards in the hospitals around London. Something that I found from talking to many HIV positive patients who have moved here from around the world is a universal sense that suffering from the disease here is much easier than coping with it from their countries of origin. They are able to find employment here more easily (if they would at all back home), and although it is impossible to say they suffer no stigma whatsoever, it’s definitely fair to say they suffer less here than in other places they have lived.

This got me thinking about the reasons for this, the burden of disease of HIV in the UK is much less than in other countries so although we’re not confronted with it regularly, it seems from stories I’ve heard and general patient experience that people in the UK are on the whole more ready to accept someone with HIV as a member of the community. In my opinion and reflecting what you’ve said above, it definitely boils down to education and public health promotion of what the disease is and its routes of transmission. I personally was prompted to begin thinking about HIV when I was still in primary school, a HIV positive man came in to talk about his experiences dealing with the disease and we were encouraged to ask questions. So in my opinion education from an early age is vital in understanding the disease and stopping us from making assumptions and forming wrong opinions that may live on till adulthood.

Vanessa