Health Care Discrimination in HIV Care

Abstract

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infected population is experiencing enormous amount of social discrimination and stigmatization compared to other patients with any other chronic illness. Healthcare setup is not an exception where the HIV infected patients are shuttled from one place to another to get their basic services compared to HIV negative patients. This referral game of manipulation imparts additional stress to the already stressed HIV infected population. The physical and psychological impacts caused by other chronic conditions will be supplemented by social impact in the HIV infected population. This referral game in healthcare can cause the HIV infected to avoid their health seeking behavior and it may bring them back to their high risk activities, which can result in higher mortality/morbidity and failure in prevention and intervention strategies.