South Africa systematic evidence review: Getting to the heart of stigma

STATUS: Current
PROJECT LEADER:Cloete, A (Dr Allanise)
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS: Nyawane, CL (Ms Lebo)
DEPARTMENT RESPONSIBLE: Public Health, Societies and Belonging (HSC)
RESEARCH OUTPUTS: "The clinic was brutal...all the nurses stigmatized her": an exploratory descriptive qualitative study of intersectional stigma experienced by people living with HIV

Abstract

HIV -related stigma is said to be frequently layered over other forms of social inequalities such as race, gender, class, sex work, homosexuality, religion, xenophobia, drug use, mental and/or physical disability, caste, disease, etc.[1] With the onset of the HIV pandemic, a discourse of othering that mediates cultural and racial positionings concerning those deemed responsible for transmitting HIV and thus were considered more vulnerable to HIV infection emerged in South Africa [2]. The ???other??? in South Africa is defined as someone with a religion or ethnic group different to one???s own, and gay men who are blamed for the transmission of HIV [3???6]. HIV was first diagnosed among ???white??? gay-identified men who have sex with men (MSM) in the 1980s [7], and only after 1990 did a second heterosexually-transmitted epidemic emerge among South Africa's ???black??? population [8].

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