Society for the Protection and Assistance of Socially Disadvantaged Individuals

Social exclusion of HIV/AIDS positive women in Iran: implemented policies for confronting the stigma and discrimination against HIV/AIDS positive women.

HIV/AIDS in Iran
The HIV/AIDS disease is a controversial issue in Iran, as this disease is transmitted through infected blood, drug addiction and sex. In Iran people with HIV/AIDS are subjected to much stigma and discrimination and treated as people who have done something wrong.

According to the head of Iran’s Center for HIV/AIDS Research, today there are 32,727 persons infected with HIV/AIDS in Iran, of which 66% are men and 33% are women. According to this report, big cities have a larger population of people with HIV/AIDS than smaller cities.

Based on Goal 10 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which focuses on reducing inequalities within countries, some governmental and non-governmental organizations in Iran are working on reducing inequalities between HIV/AIDS positive people and negative people. The Society for the Protection and Assistance of Socially Disadvantaged Individuals (SPASDI) is one of the non-governmental organizations who try and reduce inequalities between HIV/AIDS positive female headed households and other Iranian citizens, to accelerate their social inclusion.

SPASDI goals for social inclusion of HIV/AIDS positive women
SPASDI has designed its goals in three different categories; for the individual, the group and society. The goals are as follows:

Individual Goals
In this category SPASDI tries to empower HIV/AIDS positive female headed households psychologically and socioeconomically through implementing the policies below:

• Holding meetings every week with the aim of training women about the effects of HIV/AIDS on the positive female headed households’ life in order to increase their hope, self-confidence, self-esteem, and social adaptability and to improve their life skills and marital life.
• “Every day do a good job” is a slogan of the SPASDI, aiming to find other HIV/AIDS positive women and introducing them to the SPASDI. This policy assists HIV/AIDS positive female headed households to meet people who have the same disease. They also receive help from social workers through group work in order to help them avoid having a sense of revenge against others, a desire to commit suicide or a tendency towards prostitution.

Group Goals
The SPASDI’s group goals are the most important goals which focus on policy implementation:

• Training females as peer trainers after passing a number of required sessions in order to train other HIV/AIDS positive women to empower themselves psychologically and socioeconomically as well as overcoming the effects of discrimination and stigma.
• SPASDI support these women with monthly payments and vocational courses for HIV/AIDS positive female-headed households. This vocational training helps reduce poverty and enable them to have their own career. All of these services are free of charge.

Society Goals
In this category, SPASDI implements the following policies:

• Informing about the prevention and transmission of HIV/AIDS to different groups of people in society, through distributing brochures in cities, social media programs and seminars in universities, factories, military barracks etc. We also train religious leaders to inform people who participate in Friday prayers, and influence public opinion about this disease and its methods of transmission.
• Launching a mobile clinic offering free HIV/AIDS testing, consultation, and basic dentistry services.

• Encouraging government to provide facilities for HIV/AIDS positive people as citizens and giving them equal social rights, such as access to medical, educational and occupational services.

Ma'sumeh’s Story
Ma'sumeh has been one of our clients for 8 years. When she was referred to our organization she was totally depressed and hopeless. When our consultant interviewed her, she said that she has thought about committing suicide many times. She was also in a very bad economic situation. After receiving services and training through SPASDI for 8 years, she has improved her social and economic situation. Now she is trying to launch her own NGO!

Lessons learned
Based on the SPASDI experiences, there are some significant lessons that we learned about HIV/AIDS positive female-headed households:

• How to change social views towards this group, so that they are able to overcome psychological problems caused by stigma and discrimination, so they can work and have social life like other citizens.
• Despite many cultural and social obstacles, SPASDI has been able to help them to regain their self-confidence, and to take care of their own psychological and economic problems.
• We have learned that we can empower the individual, group and society through our policies.

More information: www.spasdi.ir