Discrimination and Stigma

In June 2012 issue of Osong Public Health and Research Perspective, we have raised a question that stigma and discrimination can affect aspect of HIV/AIDS in Korea [1]. Since the first reported case of AIDS, the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimated the global people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) to be 35.3 million in 2012 [2]. The cumulative total number of diagnosed PLWHAs in Korea is 9,410 in 2012, relatively low in global standard since its first diagnosis of the HIV infection in 1985 [3]. The study tracks on HIV/AIDSD in Korea are varied. The Korea National Institute of Health conducted consistent lab-based researches on HIV highly active antrirectoriviral therapy patients [3]. Since the establishment of the Korean HIV/AIDS Cohort in 2006, Korea has produced various papers on HIV/AIDS incidence, seroprevalence [4,5]. Social science approaches deals with the status of PLWHA under social context in various social settings [6e9]. The prevalence of HIV among the men who have sex with men (MSM) population continues to increase, particularly in certain parts of Asia [4e6]. This includes the Republic of Korea and is partly due to the number of HIV transmission transmissions among MSM, which has increased from just two cases in 1985 to more than 1,000 new cases per year in 2013 [6]. In Korea, transmission is believed to be most likely due to direct sexual contact rather than other causes such as intravenous drug use or mother-to-child transmission (MTCT), both of which are commonly observed in other countries. In fact, although a certain level of incidence is seen in both homosexual and heterosexual communities, social discrimination greatly contributes to the low level of cases observed in the homosexual community due to underreporting. Excluding foreign individuals, incidence rates for Korean men were shown to be 11.6 times higher than that of Korean women. Also, while the