MEXICO CITY, July 30, 2008 (AFP) - As Mexico prepares to host the first world AIDS conference in Latin America, the continent's HIV patients struggle with problems of stigma, discrimination and access to antiretroviral drugs.
Demonstrations aiming to raise AIDS awareness have already begun in the sprawling Mexican capital, before the start of the six-day meeting this weekend.
"Christ bore on the cross what we are living now: stigma and discrimination," Marco, a protester in Mexico City carrying a sign marked "Jesus has AIDS," told reporters during a recent rally of several hundred people.
Another demonstrator, Maria del Carmen, pushed her HIV-positive husband Carlos in a wheelchair and said that when he revealed his illness, they were outcast from society.
"His cousins rejected him. They said they had to burn everything he had touched. When they found out at my work, I was laid off. People look at us like strange animals."
Most countries in Latin America -- where some 1.7 million are HIV-positive according to the latest UNAIDS figures -- have anti-discrimination laws, but they rarely sanction those who fail to respect them.
From Chile to Mexico, accounts of HIV discrimination abound.
In Nicaragua, 36-year-old Julio Mena, a former soldier from the Sandinista army, became HIV-positive after a homemade blood transfusion on the battlefield.
Once he left the army he was sacked from his job as a tax inspector and hospital staff now refuse to treat him immediately when he is sick.
In Argentina, 49-year-old former accountant Carlos Cardinalli will be the first HIV sufferer to have a case of workplace discrimination studied by the Supreme Court, after filing a complaint nine years ago.
"After I had pneumonia, my company learned I was HIV positive and immediately fired me," he said.
"I had to put up with homophobic, scornful comments from the judge (in the first case) who thought that being homosexual was synonymous with AIDS."
Meanwhile, 11 cases of soldiers thrown out of the army for being HIV-positive are before Mexico's supreme court.
In Panama, AIDS organisation PROBIDSIDA said healthcare workers do not always respect patient confidentiality, while other countries, including Chile, have reported cases of forced sterilisations of HIV positive women.
Many with HIV in Peru report discrimination, but most do not dare denounce it for fear of worsening the situation, said Julio Cruz Requenes, director of the PROSA HIV support program.
In Venezuela and El Salvador, NGOs have reported cases of companies carrying out AIDS tests without the individual's consent, leading to lay offs for those tested positive.
Prejudice in Brazil is most apparent among the poorest people, said Verano Terto Junior from the ABIA support organisation.
"Drug traffickers have expelled (HIV-positive) people from favelas."
Meanwhile, those with HIV in Cuba are committed to specialised hospital units, and the authorities claim that this has helped them control the disease.
Some can live a normal life there, but only after a special commission has examined their case and ruled that they do not represent a "danger to society."
Also high on the conference agenda will be access to antiretroviral drugs, with problems reported across Latin America.
With all eyes on Mexico -- which has a law for universal access to anti-AIDS treatment -- authorities in the host country complain that they pay four times more for antiretrovirals than elsewhere on the continent.
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