We talked with Arda Karabıyık from Red Ribbon İstanbul about the people living with HIV which is one of the taboo phenomenons in Turkey as well as in lots of countries and what they had been faced with the outbreak of COVID-19.
Arda Karapınar said, “Being HIV positive means not only living with a virus but also living on the opposite side of a taboo, that is, being marginalized.” He claimed that although the disease is on the list of chronic diseases, people with HIV+ cannot reveal themselves and provide a medical report to get administrative permission from where they work because of this taboo.
* The language of the video is Turkish.
Karapınar, who said “HIV-positive people are not able to benefit from this right because prejudice, discrimination, and stigmatization confront as a much more dangerous problem.”, mentioned that people with HIV had to hide this important information about their medical status especially from their family and also their workplaces due to the negative perception towards them in the society.