Discrimination against people with HIV: Doctors are also stigmatized

11 new cases of HIV/AIDS were discovered in Montenegro this year, and one person died as a result of the disease, said Dr. Aleksandra Marjanović before the Parliamentary Committee for Health, Labor and Social Welfare.

At the session dedicated to the celebration of December 1, the International Day of the Fight against HIV/AIDS, she noted that this number has decreased compared to 2012, when 13 new cases were discovered.

"Since 1989, when the first case was registered, 153 people have contracted HIV/AIDS, 39 people have died. It is worrying that this is only the data that we know about, and the question arises as to how many of them are left outside the system", said Marjanović.

She said that it is estimated that currently around 460 people in Montenegro have HIV.

She said that the most important link in the fight against this disease is testing pregnant women for HIV in the first trimester and that we should work on that.

Marjanović noted that there are several examples of discrimination where doctors reacted inappropriately to the information that their patient had an infection.

"One example is that the patient came to the chosen doctor to ask for an appointment for an infectious disease conference, but the doctor ran out of the office upon being informed that he was HIV positive and publicly said what the patient had confided in him," she said.

DPS MP Halil Duković said that he believes that these are some earlier examples, and that he suspects that the doctors are the ones who are uneducated about this infection.

Marjanović replied that the education of doctors is not uniform in all regions, and that we still need to work on their education in smaller areas.

CAZAS representative Sanja Šišović said that the Global Fund supports projects for the prevention and early detection of infection and the fight against diseases until 2015, and that after the expiration of that deadline, we should work on securing money for these needs in other ways.

Chairman Zoran Jelić called on Šišović to send the initiative to that parliamentary body, in order to take a position and do what is within its competence on the matter.

Gallery