Stigmatization of people living with HIV in Kazakhstan and the role of the social worker in overcoming it among women with incarceration experience

Abstract

Significant progress has been made worldwide in preventing, treating,and reducing new infections and deaths due to AIDS and HIV. However, there are still many gaps from a regional perspective. For example, there are barriers to access to treatment and prevention in Central Asian countries that relate to stigma and discrimination. A great deal of research and practical observation has underscored the importance of social work in this area.The aim of the work was to study the peculiarities of stigmatization, discrimination,and human rights violations among HIV-infected people by the example of women with imprisonment experience in the Republic of Kazakhstan and to formulate recommendations  for improving the capacity of social work in de-stigmatization in the national context.A combined study was conducted using statistical,functional, and descriptive methods. A survey was conducted among women with imprisonment experience receiving services in HIV serviceorganizations in Astana and Almaty.There were revealedsomefindings. First, the main subjects of discrimination were healthcareworkers. Second, the main reasonfor stigmatization on the part of society was to adopt HIV. Third, every fifth PLHIV (21.3%) experienced fear of insults, harassment, or verbal threats. One in ten PLHIV feared physical harassment or threats of action (10.8%) or physical violence (9.5%).Thus, stigma is a significant barrier to involvement in receiving services, and disruption of social functioning. Among the recommendations are actions todevelop policies on interagency cooperation of government agencies, as well as inter-sectoral cooperation of state, public,and private sectors, the need to develop and conduct training of counseling skills of health sector staff, involving specialists from public organizations working with key populations (hereinafter -KP).