HIV/AIDS Stigma: Finding Solutions to Strengthen HIV/AIDS Programs
AIDS related stigma has pernicious effect on the epidemics prevention. Fear of stigmatisation dissuades people from seeking help from treatment, care and support services. What factors perpetuate and contribute to stigma against those infected with HIV/AIDS? Contrary to common assumption, this report finds that causal factors of AIDS stigma were similar across all four countries studied - Ethiopia, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zambia - and that woman bore the brunt of it.
This report by Change and International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is a synthesis of its findings from a multi-country study conducted from 2001-2004 on HIV/AIDS-related stigma. This research provides a holistic and effective way to design stigma-reduction interventions through tools to combat stigma and indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of stigma-reduction efforts.
Recommendations to address stigma and overcome social fears that perpetuate it include: build knowledge about HIV and AIDS and provide information on how HIV is not transmitted create stigma-free messages and safe discussion spaces to delink HIV from social taboos involve infected persons, as they have unique experience and knowledge necessary to design appropriate stigma-reduction responses measure stigma quantitatively work with communities, healthcare providers and the media to develop, test and evaluate stigma-reduction efforts,
ICRW and its partners have also developed an HIV stigma-reduction toolkit based on this report (ICWRC 2006)