Half of all attendees in a London HIV outpatients clinic who have experienced discrimination due to their HIV status have been treated unfairly or differently by a healthcare worker outside of the clinic, according to the results of a survey presented as a poster at the Twelfth Annual Conference of the British HIV Association (BHIVA) held Brighton at the end of March.
Stigma and discrimination have been highlighted as major concerns by the United Kingdom Government's Department of Health (DoH) which recently published a draft version of its Action Plan on HIV-related stigma and discrimination. The Action Plan deals mainly with addressing stigma and discrimination within society at large, but the research presented at the BHIVA conference suggests that discrimination is also experienced within the NHS.
In order to examine the extent to which diagnosed HIV-positive individuals experience discrimination as a result of their infection, investigators from City University and Homerton University Hospital asked 1687 patients at a north-east London HIV outpatient clinic, representing 73% of all eligible patients, to fill in a self-administered questionnaire.
Of the 1687 patients who filled in the questionnaire, 758 (45%) were white gay men, 480 (28%) were black African women and 224 (13%) were black African men. The remaining 425 patients did not provide gender or ethnicity information.
A total of 475 (28%) of respondents said 'yes' in answer to the question: 'Have you ever been treated unfairly or differently because of your HIV status? Significantly more gay men (34%) felt they had been discriminated against due to their HIV status than black African women (27%) and black African men (21%; p
Of these 475, 238 (50%) experienced discrimination from a healthcare worker: 121 (25%) from a dentist, 85 (18%) from their GP; and 48 (10%) from hospital staff.
The authors conclude that "tackling HIV discrimination in the health care setting should be given priority."
Elford J et al. Discrimination experienced by people living with HIV. HIV Med 7 (supplement 1), abstract P93, 2006.