The results of the second national fieldwork on the stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV in Morocco (AIDS) revealed that Moroccan society has “reconciled” with people living with the disease in recent years.
The results of the research, carried out by the Epidemiology and Disease Control Directorate of the Ministry of Health, showed an improvement in the indicator of the integration of people with AIDS into society after years of “rejection and exclusion”, such as the percentage of social marginalization affecting them fell to 2.5 percent.
The results of the study indicated an improvement in the ratio of people living with HIV to their families, as “family ostracism” decreased from 15.3% to 2.7%, while the percentage of their deprivation of health services decreased from 27.5% to 3.9%. according to the data reported by the “”Expressed“.
The indicator of their ability to access the job market also recorded a significant improvement, as the rate of refusal to hire them fell from 15 per cent to 2.6 per cent.
In the same context, the research monitored a decrease in the percentage of verbal harassment of people living with the disease, from 18.1 to 5.6 percent, after reaching 17.1 percent in 2016, and the percentage of “extortion” from 8.8 to 2.3 percent. .
According to data from the Ministry of Health in Morocco, the number of people infected with HIV is estimated at 23,000, 64% of whom are asymptomatic.
The same source explains that the percentage of new HIV infections has decreased by half in the last decade, in contrast to the increase in the percentage of people reconciled and living with the disease in the same period.
According to data presented in the context of the commemoration of World AIDS Day 2022, the highest rate of disclosure of HIV infection among infected people occurs among spouses and sexual partners and among family members, especially its transmission from infected mothers to their newborns.
Feelings of “shame” and “guilt” ranked high on the list of frequently reported feelings and patterns, according to respondents, who were 632 patients.
And 28.3% of those infected disclosed their decision not to engage in sexual intercourse after discovering the infection, and 22.9% said their HIV status forced them to avoid attending social gatherings.
