MRC PhD student

Level of study: Honours

Title: What are the attitudes resulting to stigma, rejection, discrimination and ignorance held by the first year students of UWC towards HIV/AIDS?

Project summary:
The very first cases of a new type of immune deficiency were reported in the United States of America in 1981. Since then, the number of cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) /acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has grown considerably. Slowly but surely, the disease has assumed a pandemic position and is now reported in all parts of the world. Over the few passed decades, African countries especially those in the sub Saharan Africa are the most defenseless countries to this virus. This study seek to discover the attitudes and perceptions of the first year students within the community of UWC, that may result into stigma, rejection and ignorance towards HIV/AIDS and people who are infected by it .many studied have confirmed the reality and difficulty of this tendency.

  There are a number of problems that exist among students and staff of UWC with regards to HIV/AIDS. These problems are the result of their perceptions and the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS. They include rejection: individual living with HIV/AIDS are deliberately excluded from social relationships, if people discover that someone is living with HIV/AIDS they will start to isolate themselves from that person because they think that the person is dirty, cursed, or immoral that he or she does not deserve to be treated like another normal person. Rejection is the result of ignorance, the condition of knowing something but refuse to take notice of it. When people do not want to educate themselves or hear anything that has to do with HIV/AIDS they start to be ignorant and are more likely to develop stereotypes e.g. thinking that someone with HIV/AIDS might have done something wrong, or people with HIV/AIDS might have got it because of their promiscuity. Once people develop this kind of stereotype they start to discriminate against those living with HIV/AIDS for example not wanting to associate themselves with people living with the virus, thinking that they do not deserve to be in this campus or not wanting to sit beside them. The factors that contribute to HIV/AIDS related stigma are when people think that HIV/AIDS is a life threatening disease, most people become infected only through sex, religious and moral believe lead people to think that being infected with HIV/AIDS is the result of immoral behavior.   These individuals who are discriminative and ignorant are the most dangerous not only to university of the Western Cape but to the nation as a whole and to the next generation. They are making it difficult for people trying to live with HIV/AIDS and this also interferes with attempts that are made to fight the AIDS pandemic as a whole.

Supervisors: Anniza de Villiers
Study Institution: University of the Western Cape
MRC Unit: Chronic Diseases of Lifestyle Research Unit