Addressing discrimination against HIV sufferers

On World AIDS Day the former Executive Director of UNAIDS, Professor Peter Piot, told staff at the Commonwealth Secretariat that tackling HIV will be twice as difficult if HIV-positive people continued to be discriminated against.

Professor Piot, now the Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was addressing staff and London-based High Commissioners on the advances and obstacles to treating and preventing HIV at an event to commemorate the 2010 World AIDS Day theme Universal Access and Human Rights, at the Secretariat’s headquarters in London on Wednesday, 1 December.

“What makes HIV very different to other diseases? It’s the stigma and the discrimination associated with it,” he said.

“If people with HIV are pushed underground, if you cannot discuss marginalised groups in society, it makes it doubly hard to do something about the virus. A pragmatic approach is the one that saves lives.”

Two-thirds of those who are HIV-positive today live in the Commonwealth. In the last year, around one-and-a-half million Commonwealth citizens have lost their lives due to AIDS-related illnesses and in some of its member countries, one in four people carry the virus.

The Commonwealth Secretariat has a long tradition of AIDS work, including devising national programmes to counter prejudice and stigmatisation of those with HIV.

A documentary exploring the stigma and discrimination faced by those living with HIV and AIDS in Nigeria was shown. Afterwards, Dr Sylvia Anie, Director of the Secretariat's Social Transformation Programmes Division, gave her reflections by rhetorically asking the audience key questions.

Amongst other key points, directors and staff were asked “how the stigma associated with HIV could be addressed when talk of its transmission remained taboo.”

The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Kamalesh Sharma, reiterated Professor Piot’s message that the answer to dealing with the pandemic lay partly in health care and its attendant issues such as human resources, infrastructure, drugs and money, but also advocating for the human rights of HIV-positive and marginalised people, so they could access the services they needed to deal with the virus.

“In the battle against HIV and AIDS, too many countries across the Commonwealth and the world are marginalising the people who most need their help,” said Mr Sharma.

“These include sex workers, injecting drug users, and – most worryingly of all – women, simply because of their gender.

“The simple fact is that for as long as we fall short in promoting universal human rights, we will continue to fall short on achieving universal access for those with HIV and AIDS.”

Professor Piot concluded by saying a long-term approach was needed to tackle the pandemic.

“AIDS is not over. It’s the number one killer in Sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.

“For some of the poorest countries in Africa that are heavily affected by HIV, international support will be necessary for many years in order to respond to AIDS and cope with it.”

He advocated for education, especially on prevention; community engagement; investment to build the capacity of local providers; collaboration on health and development programmes; leadership; and innovations in funding mechanisms.

He added that this already corresponded to the work and vision of the Secretariat, which had played an important role in the global response to AIDS.