Stigma around COVID19 similar to discrimination facing people with HIV, say doctors
MANILA -- Leila, a logistics nurse in a government hospital, went to pick up donations from a private company after her duty. When she arrived there, she saw the boxes stacked neatly at the lobby ready for pick up.
Later she realized that they actually moved away every time they saw her. “I was wrong. It wasn’t social distancing. They stayed as far away from me as possible. I don’t feel good about it.” But the front-liners are not the only ones struggling to survive the discrimination and harassment as a result of the health scare during this pandemic.
The public’s dread towards people who contracted the coronavirus is similar to the stigma and discrimination associated with the early cases of HIV and AIDS more than three decades ago, doctors say. “Both HIV and COVID-19 can be prevented,” he said, while emphasizing the differing infective abilities of the viruses.
“In the early 80s, people unfortunately attributed the spread solely among the gay community,” he explained, “when it was actually primarily through blood-borne transmission by unprotected sex, transfusion with contaminated blood and vertical transmission of an infected mother to her born child during pregnancy, labor, delivery and even during breastfeeding.”
As a positive test was tantamount to a death sentence, suicides were high among persons living with HIV , who chose to end their life rather than face the stigma, the agency said. Many PLHIVs lost their jobs or were expelled from school. Dr. Sescon first encountered HIV 25 years ago as a resident-in-training at a hospital prior to becoming a volunteer AIDS hotline counsellor, where he worked alongside the first PLHIVs who used assumed names while doing testimonials for the health department to calm down an increasingly hostile public that dreaded a new life-threatening disease.
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