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Stigma, HIV/AIDS and prevention of mother-to-child transmission: a pilot study in Zambia, India, Ukraine and Burkina Faso
Why women are the worst affected by the stigma of AIDS
Authors:
P. Aggleton; E. Chase
Publisher:
Panos AIDS Programme, 2001
Aims to assess and provide an initial analysis of the extent of perceived and enacted stigma, consider stigma in general and, more specifically, that surrounding mother-to-child transmission, and to explore what steps might be taken to alleviate it.
Piolot research was conducted in India (South Asia), Ukraine (Eastern Europe), Burkina Faso (Francophone West Africa) and Zambia (Anglophone Southern Africa). In all research sites examples of stigma were numerous. Whilst there were many similarities in its causes and manifestations, there were also clear contextual differences. Women throughout the research were subjected to stigma as women, as HIV-positive women and as HIV-positive women who are pregnant and/or have children. Stigma was reported everywhere to be more extensively directed against women than against men. Stigma surrounding mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) prevents women coming forward for testing, reduces their choices in terms of health care and family life once they are known to be HIV-positive, and negatively impacts on their quality of life.
Recommendations for redusing stigma include:
- Strengthening the legal framework to protect the human rights of people with HIV/AIDS
- Communities need to be empowered to understand and use policy and the law to obtain the care and support they require.
- Create supportive environments to reduce stigma through national and community-based communication initiatives to combat fear and misinformation
- Improve community based self-help services for people living with HIV/AIDS
- Increase accessibility to affordable antiretroviral (ARV) therapy.
The research highlighted the importance of prevention of MTCT programmes being integral to broad based preventive, education, care and support programmes and that there should be more direct focus on the mothers and fathers of potentially infected infants. The limited resources within communities to cope with HIV/AIDS and the current inadequacies of many health care systems to provide care and support must be taken into account. Also illustrated was how the rights and choices of HIV-positive women are repeatedly ignored or denied, that the policy framework to support their rights is weak and that their needs are almost always secondary to those of others in the community [author]
