By: Pallavi Sharma “You don’t belong to our family anymore…’’, “Don’t touch me…”, when an HIV+ person gets to hear such remarks from his near and dear ones, it hurts! The touch you’ve always loved suddenly scares you. It’s definitely something disturbing! The person infected with HIV all of a sudden faces a distinct stigma due to his positive status. Stigma is a ‘powerful social label that changes the way people are viewed and view themselves’. When a stigmatizing social label is applied, it’s usually because society considers something undesirable, shameful or unworthy. Stigma reinforces pre-existing negative assumptions, beliefs and prejudices. This is certainly true for HIV, which has reinforced deeply held prejudices against groups already marginalized and stigmatized, including gay men and ethnic minorities. When stigmatization turns into action, it becomes ‘discrimination’.

HIV positive people are discriminated in all fields, be it on the professional front or in their personal lives. This gives rise to a feeling of isolation, which has strong repercussions. It creates a climate that negatively impacts effective prevention by discouraging individuals from coming forward for testing, and from seeking information on how to protect themselves and others, thus deepening the adverse impact of living with HIV/AIDS.
For an HIV positive person, no area of life is untouched by stigma and they have to face discrimination inevitably. This, in turn, fuels the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, which is very sad and a serious concern for the society. Some factors contributing to the stigmatization of HIV positive people are:

  • AIDS is a life-threatening condition
  • It is infectious
  • There remains a lack of understanding about how it is transmitted
  • It is associated with homosexuality which is sometimes considered deviant, and as a result the HIV positive person is thought to be to blamed for having contracted HIV.


    • It is important to remember that whilst these characteristics contribute to HIV stigma, stigma is inherently illogical and cannot be adequately explained by these factors.