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Dissertation / thesis Dissertation / thesis Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Safety in the midst of stigma: experiencing HIV/AIDS in two Ghanaian communities
Author:Kwansa, Benjamin KobinaISNI
Year:2013
Issue:49
Pages:248
Language:English
Series:African Studies Collection (ISSN 1876-0198)
City of publisher:Leiden
Publisher:African Studies Centre
ISBN:9789054481256
Geographic term:Ghana
Subjects:AIDS
stereotypes
dissertations (form)
External link:https://hdl.handle.net/1887/20754
Abstract:Stigmatization of people associated with HIV can be devastating, even more so than the virus itself. It can destroy the lives of HIV positive people and their loved ones. All too often in Ghana, those with no direct HIV experience do not see the depth of the impact of stigma on individuals, households and communities. This study, the result of fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in two communities in Ghana between 2007 and 2011, brings to the fore the lived experiences of people infected with and affected by HIV from their own perspectives. The study describes the procedures and processes of taking up voluntary counselling and testing and antiretroviral medicine. In particular, HIV positive people's negotiations between resignation to fate and the struggle for survival as they cope with stigma are presented. The book shows that being infected with or affected by HIV is as much a social issue as a medical one, and those associated with HIV/AIDS require more than medical care and support. Concerted efforts by all stakeholders - social and political leadership, the untested, the uninfected, the infected, the affected, service providers and policymakers - would go a long way to reducing the main problem that persists with regard to HIV prevention and treatment in Ghana: stigma. [Book abstract]
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