HIV-Positive Moroccans Face Stigma and Rejection, Workshop Reveals

The gaze of others, people living with HIV fear it especially when their interlocutor knows a little too much about their health status. "Here (among his friends of the same serological status, Ed.), I feel normal, they treat me like a human being." Zineb, 29, who has been HIV-positive for ten years, recounts with regret her story of fear, shame and rejection, during this workshop.

Like Zineb, the twelve other participants in this workshop confided within the Casablanca branch to Agence France Presse in the presence of a psychologist and a therapeutic assistant. All, with the exception of a forty-year-old woman considered "very lucky" by the group, have either hidden their illness or experienced rejection from their loved ones, reports the same media.

In Morocco where 21,000 people are listed as HIV-positive, according to ALCS, the subject remains "taboo, because the infection is linked to sexual relations, the other taboo question in Morocco," a Muslim country imbued with prohibitions, recalls Yakoub, one of ALCS’s mediators. For this 25-year-old Moroccan, social rejection is so obvious that these people living with HIV lose everything: family, friends, job, housing.

Like 70% of infected women in this country of 35 million inhabitants, Sakina, who was infected by her husband, is the mother of a 15-year-old son, also affected. The drama at her level is that she is not ready to tell her child anytime soon, to the point of losing sleep over it.

But Sakinath is supported in the group in this decision not to inform her son. "One piece of advice, above all, don’t tell him," intervenes a young man. "Manage to have him find out from someone else," another voice launches.

Beyond these discussion groups, ALCS provides hospital care, does prevention and screening campaigns in the field, the same media points out.

Considered a "model country" by UNAIDS, Morocco, according to the same source, has been able to reduce deaths (350 in 2018) and new infections (-42% between 2010 and 2016, for an average of -4% in North Africa), thanks to improved testing, access to treatment and follow-up.

As for emergency reception, it is sometimes saturated; each doctor follows up to 40 patients per day and in the corridors, the emaciated silhouettes of the virus are heartbreaking, the same media notes.