IRANIAN PERSONS LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS UNVEIL THE EPIDEMIC OF STIGMA (AN OVERVIEW OF PATIENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE DISEASE AND COMMUNITY IN FIRST GIPA GATHERING IN TEHRAN)

The first Iranian AIDS patients’ assembly took place on 21st November 2002 in the Research Center for Gastroenterology and Liver Disease (RCGLD), an affiliate of Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran. This was a meeting for persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs). The goals of this session were to scrutinize the problems of HIV/AIDSafflicted individuals, including stigma, and to examine ways to initiate inter-group activities in the form of support groups and societies for patients (an analogue of the “Greater Involvement of People Living with AIDS” [GIPA] program launched in many regions of the world1). We present an overview of the problems that patients are facing, focusing on the psychosocial dilemma in which they are trapped.