Factors Contributing To HIV/AIDS – Related Stigma and Discrimination Attitude in Egypt: Suggested Stigma Reduction Guide for Nurses in Family Health Centers

Abstract

HIV/AIDS remains one of the world's most significant public health challenges, particularly in low- and middle-income countries like Egypt. HIV/AIDS – Related Stigma and Discrimination (S&D) has been shown to be a barrier to HIV prevention, voluntary counseling, testing, and care in many international settings. Nurses are expected to provide social and psychological support for persons living with HIV (PLHIV) in order to help them cope with stress and to reduce the stigma directed against PLHIV. However, HIV/AIDS-related S&D including HIV testing without consent, breaches of confidentiality, labeling, gossip, verbal harassment, differential treatment and even denial of treatment have been extensively documented amongst nurses. In order to combat stigma and discrimination, it is important to quantify them, to understand their magnitudes, to explore their associated factors and to explore how they vary across groups, settings and cultural contexts. Therefore, the aim of this study is first to assess factors contributing to HIV/AIDS-related S&D attitude and second to suggest a stigma reduction guide for nurses in family health centers in Egypt using a descriptive correlational design. Ten accredited family health centers which follow thirty seven medical areas of Cairo Governorate were randomly selected using a two stage cluster sampling technique; then nurses involved in primary health care activities were recruited using simple random sampling. A structured interviewing questionnaire was developed by researcher to assess nurses' personal characteristics, educational level, HIV/AIDS training, work experience, knowledge about HIV/AIDS, and attitude domains of HIV/AIDS-related S&D such as fear of casual transmission and refusal of contact with PLHIV and AIDS; values and morality-related attitude, and discrimination. Results revealed unaccepted level of knowledge and a prevalent negative stigmatizing/ discriminatory attitude about HIV/AIDS and PLHIV among nurses in these health centers. Significant relationships between nurses’ levels of knowledge, years of experience, HIV/AIDS training and HIV/AIDS- related stigma and discrimination attitude were observed at 0.000, 0.001 and 0.005 levels respectively. The current study recommends enforcement of anti-stigma and discrimination training and policies in family health centers to tackle this problem in Egypt.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS – related stigma and discrimination, Stigma Reduction Guide, Nurses, Family Health Centers, Egypt.