Creating awareness about HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest steps to prevent its spread. For people in our community, our HIV/AIDS Prevention and Support Program provides education, offers safe supplies of condoms and needles, and challenges stigmas in the community around HIV and AIDS, sexual health, and methods of prevention.
Unfortunately, there are disparities in access to health information and education, barriers to testing and getting resources like condoms, and lack of access to newer interventions like PrEP and injectable HIV treatment options. Education and outreach helps overcome barriers like stigma and inequitable disparities.
Stigma about HIV leads to discrimination, fear, and social isolation. This reduces people's willingness to get tested, disclose their status, and access services, which increases the risk of transmitting HIV to other people and negatively impacts the physical and mental health of people already living with the disease.
In its 2021 Call to Action, the United Nations reinforced its support for “urgent and transformative action to end the social, economic, racial and gender inequalities, restrictive and discriminatory laws, policies and practices, stigma and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including based on HIV status, and human rights violations that perpetuate the global AIDS epidemic”.
