The HIV epidemic in the MENA region is still at a controllable level, and this opportunity should not be missed.

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Although the HIV pandemic is witnessing a decline in the number of new infections in most regions of the world, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has a rapidly growing HIV problem. While generating HIV data has been consistently increasing since 2005, MENA’s contribution to the global HIV literature is just over 1% and the existing evidence often falls behind the academic standards. Several factors could be at play that contribute to the limited quantity and quality of HIV data in MENA. This editorial tries to explore and explain the barriers to collecting high-quality HIV data and generating precise estimates in MENA. These barriers include a number of logistic and socio-political challenges faced by researchers, public health officials, and policy-makers. Looking at successful regional HIV programs, we explore examples were policies have shifted and lessons could be learned in developing appropriate responses to HIV across the region.

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Existing research on HIV stigma has not thoroughly studied the healthcare providers' (HCP) judgment toward people living with HIV (PLHIV). The goal of this article is to conceptualize formation of stigma within attitudes of HCP through their judgmental process by using the Fairness Theory. The study is also aimed to develop a model for cognitive patterns of HCPs' stigmatizing judgments toward PLHIV by applying fuzzy logic. We applied a mixed method in two phases, including qualitative method and fuzzy analytical modeling. A sample of 17 physicians and 9 nurses from 6 hospitals in Tehran were recruited and saturation was achieved after 21 in-depth interviews. Then, the answers of six HCPs were selected for defining the fuzzy sets and membership functions' curve. Six patterns of HCPs' judgments emerged that were used for the fuzzy analysis. These patterns are outcomes of assessment on various aspects of fairness of stigmatization that is impacted by HCPs' counterfactual prototypes. Moral codes, hospital and medical rules, and also constraints imposed from the workplace environment are the references of counterfactual prototypes that affected the HCPs' judgment. Health policy makers can design more effective HIV stigma reduction interventions based on the six patterns of HCPs' judgment.