Aug 26, 2020
The Truth Behind HIV/AIDS Stigmas
Proper education about HIV/AIDS including its transmission is beyond important to be applied on public. People who don’t get the education about HIV/AIDS tend to make stigmas and mistreatments to those who suffer from that diseases without knowing the bad impact for the patient would be so big in mentally, physically, and socially.
I’ve watched videos about Mrs. Yurike, a person who suffers from HIV in an Indonesian show called Mata Najwa*. In that show, she said that she received a lot of bad stigmas from public that it made her didn’t want to do screening and check up on her son’s body condition. It was because she didn’t want her son to feel the same burden as she got, like the stigmas. The peak of pressure came from her own big family thought that HIV could be transmitted from the air so that they don’t want to intensively interact or even be in the same room with her.
HIV/AIDS can be transmitted from having risky sexual intercourse, use of syringes without medical receipt (such as drugs), and maternal transmission. As a good society, we have to educate ourselves and control our minds to give the right information about HIV/AIDS to public, so that we won’t make another bad stigmas and do mistreatments to the patients.
Stigmas and mistreatments being one of the biggest challenge that the HIV/AIDS patients have to face. Beside having to deal with their deteriorating physiological conditions, they have to deal with the social pressure that could threaten their psychological conditions. Basically, in this case, support and affection are the right things that we can give to them. Social supports can be so important even if it’s just a form of listening.
Family holds the biggest role to give supports to the patient. And, don’t avoid the person who suffer from HIV/AIDS! That would make them feel alienated, or it would make them don’t want to do the early HIV/AIDS screening because they assume that being HIV/AIDS patient is a disgrace. And even worse, that could enlarge the chain of transmission. So that’s why we’re not allowed to do the discrimination towards HIV/AIDS patient.
Mata Najwa Show*
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLADBOquXDg
