HIV/AIDS And Structural Violence

2398 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Stigma attached to HIV

HIV/AIDS appeared in the 1980’s and quickly spread throughout the world. There is a strong, visible link between HIV/AIDS risk and infection and low social and economic development (Parker, 2002). The HIV epidemic occurs in places of poverty, racism, gender inequality, and sexual oppression. The growing division between the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor is increasing the isolation of and disease presence among the poor populations (Parker, 2002).
HIV/AIDS almost exclusively affects populations living with various forms of structural violence. Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals (Burtle, 2010). It can also be characterized by discrimination, exploitation, and injustice. The victims of structural violence are a social body rather than individuals. It is observed through survival rates and can be described as a ‘loss of life-years,’ rather than by counting the number of dead (Høivik, 1977).
Dr. Paul Farmer describes structural violence as “violence exerted systematically, that is, indirectly, by everyone who belongs to a certain social order,” and he explains that erasing history is the most common tool used by those inflicting structural violence (Farmer, 2004).
Structural violence has a powerful effect on the risk and spread of HIV/AIDS because policies and laws limit access to proper and effective treatment for groups of individuals infected, especially poor women.
One of the biggest issues the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) addresses is the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS and the need to fight it. Many public health experts believe that stigma, along with the high cost of treatment, the lack of infrastructure, and the la...

... middle of paper ...

...e infected gain access to treatment. There are many stigmas and stereotypes associated with individuals who are infected. Policies put in place by wealthy nations over the highly impacted developing nations directly affect how people access medication and social services. In addition, local policies and laws affect how individuals earn an income and how they can survive. In the case of sex workers in Canada, the police force the sex workers to more remote and isolated areas, increasing their risk of violence and lowering their ability to negotiate condom use. On a larger scale, poor countries are unable to economically compete with wealthy countries. The only means they have to get themselves out of poverty is being out produced by the market leaders. Poor countries and poor communities in wealthy countries have the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the world.

Show More
Related

  • Racism and Discrimination in Healthcare

    2286 Words  | 5 Pages

    Structural violence is differentiated from direct violence both in terms of etiology and nature. D...

    Read More

  • Cooperation And Conflict In The Henrietta Lacks Story

    1277 Words  | 3 Pages

    Structural violence has been a major topic in this course “Cooperation and Conflict”, and it has also been one topic that I can relate to and speak on. In the Henrietta Lacks story, structural violence is a big theme. Doctors completely violated her human and civil rights as a patient by not informing her of certain procedures that were done on her body. They took small slices of a cell of hers to research and run tests on it. Though these cells aided in great developments in research and medicine, Henrietta at the very least should have been informed of what exactly they would do it. Also, by that I do not mean in medical terms that she would not understand, but the doctor taking the time to explain to her in a way that she would at least

    Read More

  • Exploring Factors Affecting the Quality of Life for Australia’s Rural Population

    1474 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wilkinson, R., Kawachi, I., & Kennedy, B., 1998, Mortality, the social environment, crime and violence. In: Bartley, M., Blane, D., & Davey Smith, G. (eds). The Sociology of Health Inequalities. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

    Read More

  • Exploring HIV Epidemic Causes in Sub-Saharan Africa

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    The HIV epidemic hits nowhere else in the world harder than Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the entire world’s cases of HIV. In her book, “The Invisible Cure”, writer Helen Epstein explores the myriad of reasons as to why the HIV outbreak is so alarming as well as differentiated than any other area of the world. Epstein explores how cultural factors influence individual behaviors as well as generations that grow up under these cultural conditions, how political involvement (or lack thereof) can often misinform people, and how structural levels of privilege allows less opportunity for those in poverty to obtain the help that they may need.

    Read More

  • Coady's Violence Definition

    715 Words  | 2 Pages

    Coady then claims that the structural view is counterintuitive; specifically, he points out that our ordinary usage of the term rarely refers to many non-physical acts, such as those of social injustices. For this reason it seems that the structural view appears to be overly general, in which it is confusing and unhelpful. Moreover it appears as if the proponents of the structural view over-moralize it when they endorse certain social reforms that will supposedly eliminate all structural violence. Claims like this seem to assume that all violence is morally wrong. This assumption is itself dubious if we are to trust the common intuition in cases similar to the active shooter case mentioned earlier.

    Read More

  • The Motivation Behind the Columbine High Shootings

    3724 Words  | 8 Pages

    Violence in all of its manifestations is based on an exercise of power. It represents a means to gain power, to maintain power, or as a response to a threat to one's power. As long as a society maintains the legitimacy of social hierarchies, of the right of some people to have power over others, there will be violence. One can either seek to diffuse the concentration of power or to control violence. By its very character, the attempt to control violence is self-defeating. The control will itself become violent.

    Read More

  • Discussion To Nursing: An Introduction To Professional Nursing

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    (Allen et al., 2000) The Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a clinical situation that requires the ethical principle Justice to be implemented. AIDS can be transmitted by sexual activity, intravenous (IV) drug use, and passed from mother to child. Due to the judgments and fears from the general population and some healthcare professionals, patients who have this disease may find themselves suffering from discrimination in many ways of their lives. This discrimination comes from the stigma placed by the factors in which AIDS is mainly spread. These factors are poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, prostitution, human-trafficking, which create the labels like the “drug user” or “homosexual”.

    Read More

  • Violence Against Aboriginal Women

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    Violence causes a great deal of suffering and harm in the world today and yesterday (Cross 2013). Peace and conflict researchers are undeniably justified in their selection of inter and intra-state violence as objects of study because the social context for both the performance and understanding of violence is of central importance (Cross 2013). However it is surprisingly rare to find a definition of violence (Moore 2003). Thus uncertainty prevails as to whether violence is limited to physical abuse or includes verbal and psychological abuse (Moore 2003). Agreeing with Moore (2003), Galtung (1969) said it is not important to arrive at a definition of violence because there are obliviously many types of violence. Violence is not

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis of an Article on HIV/AIDS Prevention Issues for Women

    968 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author mentions a few key take away main points. First of all, solutions must address the underlying causes of HIV risk among women. This mainly includes poverty and disempowerment because women in lower living standar...

    Read More

  • Structural Violence: Hughes And Bourgois

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    Furthermore, Williams is the first to draw a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate force. Nonetheless, even these seven definitions and distinctions fail to highlight the violence’s complexity. Thus, Williams expands his definition, not of violence itself, but on how to understand violence through analyzing hegemony processes; therefore, opening the possibility for social critique. Likewise, Hughes and Bourgois, attempt to make sense of violence by defining structural violence and symbolic violence, “Structural violence [as] the violence of poverty, hunger, social exclusion and

    Read More

  • Hiv / Aids : A Manifestation Of Poverty

    748 Words  | 2 Pages

    By the year 2000, 58 million people have been infected by HIV/AIDS and alarming numbers such as 22 million would have already died. And the epidemic continues to spread. HIV/AIDS historically is considered to be one of the longest running worldwide epidemics that we have ever seen, and figures cannot be placed on the true death tolls or estimation of the damage as the cycle still is yet to reach an end (Whiteside 2002). With Africa being the worst hit continent in the world in terms of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the severity of it’s prevalence; one can only begin to question whether HIV/AIDS and poverty and directly connected or the inter-linkages exacerbate one or the other. This paper aims to argue that HIV/AIDS is a manifestation of poverty, and simultaneously poverty contributes to growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Development in response both to poverty reduction and to HIV/AIDS is complicated when both have multi-dimensional and multi-faceted impacts on a society, whether it be social, economic or human development impacts. This paper will argue that pre-existing socio economic conditions within a country such as high levels of poverty, poor sanitation, malnutrition, environmental degradation and poor public healthcare systems and limited access to preventative care are crucial factors in contributing to the transfer of the infection (Pasteur: 2000, Mann: 1999).

    Read More

  • Globalization and HIV/AIDS

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, commonly known as HIV/AIDS is a disease, with which the human immune system, unlike in other disease, cannot cope. AIDS, which is caused by the HIV virus, causes severe disorder of the immune system and slowly progresses through stages which disable the body’s capability to protect and instead makes it vulnerable for other infections. The first blood sample to contain HIV was drawn in 1959 in Zaire, Africa while molecular genetics have suggested that the epidemic first began in the 1930s (Smallman & Brown, 2011). Currently, according to the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS, 35.3 million people worldwide are living with HIV. In 2012, an estimated 2.3 million people became newly infected with the virus and 1.6 million people lost their lives to AIDS (Fact Sheet, UNAIDS). It is due to the globalized international society that a disease which existed in one part of the world has managed to infect so many around the world. Globalization is narrowly defined by Joseph Stiglitz as "the removal of barriers to free trade and the closer integration of national economies" (Stiglitz, 2003). Globalization has its effects in different aspects such as economy, politics, culture, across different parts of the world. Like other aspects, globalization affects the health sector as well. In a society, one finds different things that connect us globally. As Barnett and Whiteside point out (2000), “health and wellbeing are international concerns and global goods, and inherent in the epidemic are lessons to be learned regarding collective responsibility for universal human health” (Barnett & Whiteside, 2000). Therefore, through all these global connections in the international society, t...

    Read More

  • Structural Violence

    1728 Words  | 4 Pages

    Structural violence differs from direct violence. Direct violence is brutal and flashy and gets a reaction from people who find out about what has happened. Structural violence is almost invisible, it is almost always seen as the way things have always been done or considered not as bad as it could be. Structural violence does not need to be bloody and brutal like direct violence; it can be as ordinary as inadequate schools in inner cities operating in rundown buildings with rooms over packed with students. Structural violence, however, is often times causes more suffering and pain than direct violence will and is harder to stop.

    Read More

  • The Stigma of HIV/ AIDS

    2443 Words  | 5 Pages

    From the moment scientists identified HIV and AIDS, social responses of fear, denial, stigma and discrimination have accompanied the epidemic. Discrimination has spread rapidly, fuelling anxiety and prejudice against the groups most affected, as well as those living with HIV or AIDS. It goes without saying that HIV and AIDS are as much about social phenomena as they are about biological and medical concerns. Across the world the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS has shown itself capable of triggering responses of compassion, solidarity and support, bringing out the best in people, their families and communities. But the disease is also associated with stigma, repression and discrimination, as individuals affected (or believed to be affected) by HIV have been rejected by their families, their loved ones and their communities. This rejection holds as true in the rich countries of the north as it does in the poorer countries of the south.

    Read More

  • Preventing HIV/ AIDS

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    The emergence of HIV/AIDS is viewed globally as one of the most serious health and developmental challenges our society faces today. Being a lentivirus, HIV slowly replicates over time, attacking and wearing down the human immune system subsequently leading to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) at which point the affected individual is exposed to life threatening illnesses and eventual death. Despite the fact that a few instances of this disease have been accounted for in all parts of the world, a high rate of the aforementioned living with HIV are situated in either low or medium wage procuring nations. The Sub-Saharan region Africa is recognized as the geographic region most afflicted by the pandemic. In previous years, people living with HIV or at risk of getting infected did not have enough access to prevention, care and treatment neither were they properly sensitized about the disease. These days, awareness and accessibility to all the mentioned (preventive methods, care etc.) has risen dramatically due to several global responses to the epidemic. An estimated half of newly infected people are among those under age 25(The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic). It hits hard as it has no visible symptoms and can go a long time without being diagnosed until one is tested or before it is too late to manage.

    Read More

More about HIV/AIDS And Structural Violence

Open Document