STIGMA: THE KEY CHALLENGE FOR HIV/AIDS COMMUNICATION

Abstract

“...to understand the HIV pandemic in Africa is to understand how people who live with it explain it, or rather how they construct schemes of risk assessment in the face of it. It is by listening to the 'stories' that we can understand the context in which the pandemic is constructed, including factors that may promote or constrain behaviour change” Rugalema (2004: 192). Two of the stories that Rugalema refers to are reported as follows: they are both voices of high school girls from Rhini Township, in Grahamstown, South Africa.