If you want to control HIV, get rid of laws that criminalise those most at risk of carrying the virus. That鈥檚 the message from UNAIDS, which this week unveiled a campaign calling for 鈥渮ero discrimination鈥�.
In an accompanying , UNAIDS says 63 countries still prosecute people who fail to disclose that they are HIV-positive, and those who unknowingly pass on the virus.
Meanwhile, 76 countries criminalise same-sex relations 鈥� a factor that is linked to increased HIV prevalence. And in countries with punitive laws of this kind, 1 in 7 HIV-positive people report being denied healthcare, with 1 in 10 denied jobs.
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A 2011 study in Botswana, Malawi and Namibia found that HIV-infected gay men were four times as likely to report fear, five times as likely to report having been blackmailed and 46 times more likely to report discrimination than uninfected gay men ().
UNAIDS argues that this kind of persecution obstructs progress against the disease by encouraging affected people to remain silent. 鈥淕etting to zero new HIV infections will be impossible without striving towards zero discrimination,鈥� says Michel Sidib茅, executive director of UNAIDS in Melbourne, Australia.
