Social stigma still biggest challenge in fight against AIDS

The government and the United Nations see social stigma and discrimination as the most serious challenge to their effort to stop the spread of AIDS.

The Philippine National AIDS Council (PNAC) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) agree that stigmatization has affected their monitoring and prevention of AIDS cases in the country.

Dr. James Piad, PNAC medical specialist from the Department of Health (DOH), said the National AIDS Registry reported only a cumulative total of 2,354 official cases in September 2005 when the United Nations Unite Against AIDS (UNAIDS) program estimated at least 9,000 cases among Filipinos in 2003.

"The stigma has been overly sensationalized," he said during the weekly forum at the National Press Club in Intramuros, Manila yesterday morning. "These AIDS victims should not be isolated from society."

Stigmatization keeps AIDS victims from coming out to be able to receive medication and be prevented from infecting other people, he added.

Piad has attributed this stigma to lack of proper information on AIDS and human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.

"What most people don’t know is that other diseases, like the hepatitis-B, could be more dangerous than AIDS," he said.

Piad said AIDS could be transmitted through three bodily fluids — blood, semen or cervical fluid, and breast milk — which make it less infectious than hepatitis-B.

Hepatitis-B can be transferred virtually via all bodily fluids including saliva and urine, he added.

Piad said the DOH hopes to resolve this problem through its integrated AIDS curriculum program in schools, where basic information on the disease would be taught to grades 5 and 6, high school and college students.

Lack of information on AIDS extends even to families and children affected by the disease, as confirmed by the Unicef.

Ema Naito, Unicef representative to the Philippines, said stigma and discrimination cause a "climate of fear" which has been a major impediment in their AIDS public information campaign.

"A study showed that most Filipino parents living with HIV are reluctant to tell their children about their status because they want to protect their children from related stigma and discrimination," she said.

"Even infected children are not being told about HIV. As long as society continues to discriminate against people with HIV this will continue."

Naito said they are particularly concerned about the effects of this stigma on children of parents living with AIDS.

"The children are not given the chance to prepare for the possible impending death of a parent, often remaining in the dark about the disease," she said.

Naito said poverty is a major cause of the spread of AIDS.

"Less access to information, education and health services is directly related to the spread of AIDS," she said.

Although the number of AIDS cases in the country is relatively low compared to other countries, there is no reason to be complacent, she added.

Sub-Saharan countries like South Africa and Botswana have the most number of HIV cases, with an average of 30 percent of adults recorded as HIV positive, according to UNAIDS.

Next to them is India, the second most populous country in the world.