Let us talk about the Double Standard Between HIV and Hepatitis B
A few days ago, I took my child to a clinic close to my house because he was complaining of stomach pain.While we were waiting to see the doctor, something happened that got me thinking.
She said it confidently. She wasn’t whispering. She wasn’t trying to hide it. She simply stated the reason.
What surprised me even more was the reaction of everyone around her.
Nobody looked shocked. Nobody stared. Nobody whispered. The nurse attended to her as though it was just another normal conversation , which it should be.
Then a question crossed my mind.
Would the atmosphere have been the same if she had mentioned HIV instead of Hepatitis B?
I honestly don’t think so.
Many mothers living with HIV would never feel comfortable making that statement openly, not because they are ashamed of themselves, but because they know how society often reacts. The fear of judgment, rejection, gossip, and discrimination is still very real.
What makes this even more ironic is that many people don’t realize that Hepatitis B is also a serious viral infection. It can be transmitted from mother to child during birth, become chronic, lead to liver cirrhosis or liver cancer, and claim lives if left untreated.
Yet Hepatitis B does not carry anything close to the level of stigma that HIV does.
Both conditions deserve compassion, proper medical care, and public awareness. Neither should be a reason to judge anyone.
Maybe the real illness we need to cure is the stigma that surrounds HIV.
No one should have to hide their health status out of fear of being treated differently. If we can normalize conversations about Hepatitis B, perhaps one day we can do the same for HIV.
Until then, many people will continue to suffer in silence — not because of the virus itself, but because of society’s attitude toward it.
The truth is, Hepatitis can be more dangerous than HIV. But unlike HIV, there’s not enough awareness about it. People need to understand that Hepatitis can kill faster than HIV.
ReplyDeleteIn the coming weeks, I’ll share the story of an HIV-positive lady I came in contact with.
©️ TEEJAY
What makes this even more ironic is that many people don’t realize that Hepatitis B is also a serious viral infection. It can be transmitted from mother to child during birth, become chronic, lead to liver cirrhosis or liver cancer, and claim lives if left untreated.
ReplyDeleteWhat people fail to understand is that, hepatitis B is more deadly than HIV, easily trasmited and most people have it without knowing, no campaign or enlightenment about it. It is well..
Greetings poster.
Poster de play, are you seriously pretending not to know why many HIV patients are judged? *sideeyes*
ReplyDeleteHepatitis B is almost always sexually transmitted. When my mother’s generation and mine die off the stigma around hiv will go with us. We carry the memories of the global campaign against HIV. We remember the stories of gay men dropping like flies everywhere. We remember the harrowing pictures of gaunt faces fading away in hospital beds. Everybody knows that the hiv crisis in Africa was manufactured to take away from the stigma in oyinbo lands. It was a PR move created to transfer stigma and it worked. Today HIV isn’t a gay man’s disease, it became a black ppl’s disease. And if African folks are smart they will never allow this stigma transfer to happen again. Chyna tried it during Covid, you remember how they were trying to pin Covid on the Black ppl who lived there. Anyhow, I’ve gone off on a tangent.
ReplyDeleteStigma is created through gossip, fear, and finding a scapegoat. Having hepatitis is not better than having hiv. Even diabetes is a disease that can lead to very ugly outcomes. The problem is that once a disease is widely known as sexually transmitted, dirtiness is assigned to it and the infected. Even the wording changes, nobody says someone with hepatitis virus is a carrier, but ppl with hiv are still spoken of as carriers, to elicit fear that they are a walking petri dishes ready to infect the masses.
The world today is a different place than it was in 1983. It will be a different place in 2066