LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- One-fourth of HIV patients surveyed in the Los Angeles area report feeling stigmatized by their healthcare providers.
"Whether or not it is actual stigmatization is hard to measure, because it’s coming from the patients that we interviewed," said study leader Janni J. Kinsler of the University of California at Los Angeles. "The point is that these people feel that way, and that’s bad enough, because they’re less likely to seek the care they need."
The findings are based on 223 HIV-positive individuals in Los Angeles County, with initial baseline interviews taking place between May 2004 and June 2005 and follow-up interviews conducted six months later, from November 2004 to December 2005.
Eighty percent of the respondents were male, 46 percent were African-American and 40 percent were Latino. Nearly three-quarters had a high school education or less, half had annual incomes below $8,000 and 46 percent did not have insurance, said Kinsler.
Because of this stigma, patients may seek medical care only when their illness has progressed to a more severe stage, leading to more intensive medical interventions, hospitalization and earlier death, reported the study published in the journal AIDS Patient Care and STDs.
