Stigma, discrimination hurting fight against AIDS

STIGMA AND discrimination continue to hinder the national drive to raise public awareness about the facts relating to HIV and AIDS more than 35 years after Jamaica officially acknowledged its first case. Detected in 1982, HIV is present in all 14 parishes, and while there has been substantial progress in getting affected persons to realise that being HIV positive is not a death sentence, public misconceptions about the realities of HIV and AIDS are putting more people at risk.

“There is a perception that HIV is a curse. As a woman, they think you might have been promiscuous, and [then] there is the perception that men who are HIV positive are also engaged in sex with men. There is also stigma and discrimination, one has to admit, on the part of some health care workers. So stigma and discrimination is what keeps many persons out of care,” Dr Denise Chevannes-Vogel, executive director of the National Family Planning Board Sexual Health Agency, told The Gleaner last week.

This is particularly painful in light of the strides Jamaica has made in terms of out-patient care for persons who are HIV positive, Chevannes Vogel explained.

Jamaica has adopted a test-and-start approach, in that once the CD4 (a test used to assess the immune system) shows it has been compromised to a certain level, only then would therapy begin.

“Now, the evidence is [that] as soon as somebody is diagnosed as being HIV positive, you link them into care and they must be retained in antiretroviral therapy. When they are retained in antiretroviral therapy, they go into what is called viral suppression, where they don’t transmit the virus anymore. One can’t say that there is a cure because they still have the virus, but the virus is no longer replicating and causing damage and being transmitted, and so it is possible to have persons in viral suppression, which is the ultimate goal,” Chevannes-Vogel pointed out.