August 1999

Public Perceptions of PLHA

Burkinabé tend to label anyone presenting such clinical signs as diarrhea and significant weight loss as being HIV-positive. At the same time, apparently relatively few identify the difference between being seropositive yet symptomless and being ill with AIDS. People living with HIV/AIDS are thus perceived, first and foremost, as sick people.

“For the man in the street, you can’t talk of an HIV carrier who isn’t ill. An HIV carrier equals AIDS victim equals dead,” a CBO member told Horizons researchers.

Part of the reason for this is the influence of national prevention campaigns that attempted to frighten people into taking preventive measures by portraying death-like, hopeless images of infected people (Meda 1998). Many of these messages also associate HIV infection with transgression of sexual norms, targeting sex workers and “easy women” as responsible for transmission of the virus. Popular perceptions of AIDS are also influenced by the belief of many that it is caused by sorcery.

Thus, many Burkinabes appear to perceive people living with HIV/AIDS, both asymptomatic and ill, as a threat on three levels:

• A health threat, due to unfounded fears that HIV can be transmitted by casual physical contact such as shaking hands.
• A moral threat, because AIDS remains a “shameful” illness for those affected and for their families and communities.
• A supernatural threat, because of the belief that HIV-positive people and their families have been “cursed.”

Stigmatization and discrimination are too often the result. A national study conducted in 1996 revealed that 45 percent of the rural population and 60 percent of city dwellers in Burkina Faso expressed discriminatory attitudes toward people with AIDS (Meda 1998). The Horizons diagnostic study also identifies the fear of stigmatization as the primary factor limiting PLHA involvement at the community level.

See Also

• Population Council – Burkina Faso
• Population Council – HIV/AIDS

For additional information please contact: 
Horizons 
Population Council 
4301 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 280 
Washington, DC 20008
Telephone: +1 202 237 9400 
Facsimile: +1 202 237 8410 
E-mail: horizons@popcouncil.org 

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This page updated
03 Jan 2009