Medical Discrimination Affects the HIV/AIDS Epidemic Control: A Study of Self-Perceived Medical Discrimination on People Living with HIV or AIDS

Abstract

People living with HIV or AIDS (PLWHA) experienced severe medical discrimination which is seriously affecting their lives. However, few studies examined the epidemic characteristics of self-perceived medical discrimination from the discrimination objects such as PLWHA. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the epidemiological status and analyze the influential factors of the self-perceived medical discrimination on PLWHA in South China. The self-designed questionnaire was used to investigate the medical discrimination status of the 443 infected persons, who were randomly recruited from the representative AIDS designated hospitals in Guangdong Province in South China. The results showed that 49.0% of PLWHA experienced medical discrimination, and 55.3% received discriminatory treatment, 48.4% experienced refusal of treatment, 36.4% had private information leaked and 12.9% received mandatory test. However, 52.2% patients chose to endure discrimination in silence. Compared with the Asymptomatic HIV-infected patients, AIDS patients perceived more medical discrimination. The Logistic regression analysis indicated that PLWHA self-perceived medical discrimination status was influenced by 4 factors: the voluntary of first medical detection, the route of transmission, the stage of the disease and the familiarity with the HIV/AIDS-related law. Additionally, the two dimensions of the life quality scale were influenced by medical discrimination, namely, overall function and disclosure worry. Ultimately, our study provides a better understanding of the relationship between infection status, quality of life and the medical discrimination they experienced or perceived. It will help health professionals and policy makers to develop tailored behavioral and policy-oriented intervention strategies for PLWHA to tackle different types of medical discrimination in high-risk settings.

Lived experiences of people living with HIV: a descriptive qualitative analysis of their perceptions of themselves, their social spheres, healthcare professionals and the challenges they face daily

“…They deemed such behaviors a form of discrimination. Likewise, it has been reported in studies conducted in different countries that the participant PLWH were subjected to discrimination in healthcare environments and thus refused to seek healthcare services [71][72][73][74]. There are also studies in Turkey that demonstrated the stigma and discrimination in healthcare settings at both institutional and individual levels against PLWH [34,38].…”

Predictors of Stigma and Health-Related Quality of Life Among People Living with HIV in Northern Thailand

“…The three types of HIV-related stigma include self-perceived stigma, internalized stigma, and experienced stigma, 10 which commonly occur in three areas: social and community area, medical and health work area, and self-perceived stigma or personal perception, 18 of which self-perceived stigma was found to more negatively impact overall well-being among PLWHIVs than external discrimination. 19 However, research on HIV-related stigma and discrimination has been mainly focused on health care providers' and public's perspective, whereas there is paucity of research on discrimination under PLWHIV's perspective, who are the discrimination objects.…”

“… 19 However, research on HIV-related stigma and discrimination has been mainly focused on health care providers' and public's perspective, whereas there is paucity of research on discrimination under PLWHIV's perspective, who are the discrimination objects. 18 …”

Stigmatization, discrimination, violation of autonomy and compromised confidentiality: Lived experiences of people living with HIV on the onset of their illness in Turkey

“…They deemed such behaviors as a form of discrimination. Likewise, it was reported in a study conducted in South China that almost half of the PLWH participating in the study were subjected to discrimination in healthcare environments and thus refused to benefit from healthcare services (66). In a study carried out in Kazakhstan, it was found that PLWH experience denial of services by healthcare professionals and tend to avoid healthcare professionals due to such perceived negative attitudes (67).…”