Old stigmas and new epidemiological risks. Incidence and prevalence of HIV AIDS around the world

Authors

  • Carmen Gil de Arriba

Keywords:

stigma, discrimination, inequality, infectious diseases, epidemics, HIV/AIDS, Third World, underdevelopment

Abstract

More than a quarter of a century passed since the detection of the first cases of HIV AIDS, the current situation is quite distinct to the original one in the mid 1980s. However, the fact is that this disease is still conceived as a stigma in a Goffman’sense, which means that a great part of responsibility falls on infected people as well as the countries suffering the pandemic effects. Such a view understates a set of more complex causes as discrimination and inequality, related to historical and economical processes or situations of domination and oppression given at an international scale.

Published

2008-09-04