Opinion: Efforts Against HIV/AIDS Must Address "Stigma, Discrimination and Quality of Care"

New York Times: The Missing Piece in the War on AIDS
Ellie Feinglass, a health and human rights consultant in sub-Saharan Africa

"Our strategy [against HIV/AIDS], if it is to be successful, must recognize that achieving universal access to care and treatment necessarily means addressing human rights barriers to health services. This will require confronting not only the challenges of physical distance and availability of diagnostics and drugs, but also of stigma, discrimination and quality of care. ... As we push forward in the struggle to achieve the universal right to health care, we must call on governments, donors, and the NGO community to place real investment in the legal empowerment of the poor and to recognize this piece not as an add-on, but instead as vital as the medicine itself" (1/7).