PUBLIC HEALTH MATTERS “I Have an Evil Child at My House”: Stigma and HIV/AIDS Management in a South African Community

Stigmatization of people living with AIDS is a key obstacle to HIV prevention and AIDS care. It is now generally accepted that efforts to reduce stigma should be an integrated part of all HIV/AIDS programming.1 However, discussions of the form such efforts should take remain in their infancy. Here we discuss the social roots of stigma in the interest of contributing to debates about appropriate stigma reduction interventions, drawing on a case study of HIV/AIDS management among young people in South Africa. The existing HIV/AIDS literature points to 3 antistigma strategies. The first is information-based awareness programs designed to re