Sailors’ fear of the stigma of HIV/AIDS

Abstract

Introduction. Seafarers face many occupational, health and psychosocial problems on a daily basis. Maritime as a profession has a special combination of conditions that have a strong impact on the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) and make prevention programs difficult to succeed.

Objective. To study the attitudes towards sharing and attitudes towards HIV-positive people among seafarers in the workplace.

Material and methods. 100 persons practicing the maritime profession were surveyed using an anonymous questionnaire, approved by the Commission on Scientific Ethics at the Medical University — Varna.The results were statistically processed with SPSS v. 20.0, using variation, comparison and correlation analyzes.

Results and discussion. Most of the respondents have sufficient experience in their profession, have higher education and have an equal distribution in deck and machine command (41% each), 18% are from the executive staff. All respondents are adamant that they would share the result of the HIV test with their family or partner, with only 24.0% stating that they would share the positive result with colleagues and 26.0% with the employer. We found a significant difference (c² 39.47; p<0.001) and a moderate dependence (r=0.34; p=0.001) on the behavior of respondents regarding the sharing of the positive result of the HIV test with members of their professional environment (colleagues and managers).

The sailors are afraid to work with HIV-seropositive colleagues because their knowledge about the prevalence, risk factors and perceptions about the transmission and prevention of HIV infection have a lot of gaps.

Conclusion. Despite training from unions, medical organizations and governments, the dreaded myths about HIV/AIDS persist. The degree of ignorance of the reality around HIV/AIDS is directly proportional to the stigmatization of the problem.