Why is there stigma related to HIV and AIDS?

Fear of contagion coupled with negative, value-based assumptions about people who are infected leads to high levels of stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS.²

Factors that contribute to HIV/AIDS-related stigma:

• HIV/AIDS is a life-threatening disease, and therefore people react to it in strong ways.
• HIV infection is associated with behaviours (such as homosexuality, drug addiction, prostitution or promiscuity) that are already stigmatised in many societies.
• Most people become infected with HIV through sex which often carries moral baggage.
• There is a lot of inaccurate information about how HIV is transmitted, creating irrational behaviour and misperceptions of personal risk.
• HIV infection is often thought to be the result of personal irresponsibility.
• Religious or moral beliefs lead some people to believe that being infected with HIV is the result of moral fault (such as promiscuity or 'deviant sex') that deserves to be punished.

The fact that HIV/AIDS is a relatively new disease also contributes to the stigma attached to it. The fear surrounding the emerging epidemic in the 1980s is still fresh in many people’s minds. At that time very little was known about the risk of transmission, which made people scared of those infected due to fear of contagion.

From early in the AIDS epidemic a series of powerful images were used that reinforced and legitimised stigmatisation.

• HIV/AIDS as punishment (e.g. for immoral behaviour)
• HIV/AIDS as a crime (e.g. in relation to innocent and guilty victims)
• HIV/AIDS as war (e.g. in relation to a virus which must be fought)
• HIV/AIDS as horror (e.g. in which infected people are demonised and feared)
• HIV/AIDS as otherness (in which the disease is an affliction of those set apart)

View examples of alarming 1980s public health advertisements from the UK and Australia associating AIDS with death.