Executive Director of PLAN Health Advocacy and Development Foundation, Mr Obatunde Oladapo, has said that ending HIV stigma is important in Nigeria to ensure adherence to HIV medication and ultimately an epidemic control of HIV in Nigeria.
Oladapo, who spoke at a media roundtable and town hall on Zero Stigma Day 2024 in Ibadan, said HIV stigma is rife in Nigeria and hardly is there any person with HIV who has not experienced either self-stigma or enacted stigma from other people.
He declared that stigma, a form of unfair labelling of persons based on myths and misconceptions that are not limited to HIV, has a devastating effect on people who disclose their HIV status or whose HIV status was disclosed without their knowledge.
“When it comes to HIV, people who are stigmatised do so because of a wrong perception of their vulnerability and risk to HIV. In some situations, stigma is because people are associating HIV with some behaviours. They feel that it is only people who are sexually promiscuous that could have HIV. It reduces people’s self-esteem.
“It is a big obstacle to HIV treatment. A lot of people have abandoned their treatment because they are stigmatised in healthcare settings. Some people avoid taking their drugs because they don’t want people around them to know their HIV positivity. This could lead to resistance.
“Stigma increases infection and the spread of HIV because a lot of people who would have disclosed to their sexual partners do not disclose. They don’t want them to know they are positive. And it means their sexual partners could lower their guard and they could infect other people.”
Mr Fredrick Adegboye, an HIV rights activist and retired journalist, declared that the major modes of transmission of HIV include sexual intercourse, and this had contributed to the stigmatisation of persons living with HIV.
According to him, the three major modes of HIV transmission are through sex, contracting with an infected person’s blood, and then vertical transmission, that is mother-to-child transmission.
“It’s the perception of society that because HIV is contracted through sex, the people who might have been involved in sin are those that contract HIV. As if others are not exposed to HIV the same way people who are living with HIV were exposed to before they became positive.”
Mr Adegboye, however, urged enforcement and increased awareness of the anti-HIV stigma law. In Nigeria, even as he said, people living with HIV whose rights had been infringed can do something about it through this law.
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