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“Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya

BACKGROUND: A tenth of all people who inject drugs in Kenya are women, yet their social contexts and experiences remain poorly understood. This paper reports how multiple forms of stigma are experienced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya and the impact that they have on their ability to acce...

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Autores principales: Mburu, Gitau, Ayon, Sylvia, Tsai, Alexander C., Ndimbii, James, Wang, Bangyuan, Strathdee, Steffanie, Seeley, Janet
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5970466/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29801494
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-018-0235-9
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author Mburu, Gitau
Ayon, Sylvia
Tsai, Alexander C.
Ndimbii, James
Wang, Bangyuan
Strathdee, Steffanie
Seeley, Janet
author_facet Mburu, Gitau
Ayon, Sylvia
Tsai, Alexander C.
Ndimbii, James
Wang, Bangyuan
Strathdee, Steffanie
Seeley, Janet
author_sort Mburu, Gitau
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A tenth of all people who inject drugs in Kenya are women, yet their social contexts and experiences remain poorly understood. This paper reports how multiple forms of stigma are experienced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya and the impact that they have on their ability to access essential health services. METHODS: In 2015, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were held with 45 women who inject drugs in two coastal towns. These data were supplemented with in-depth interviews with five individual stakeholders involved in service provision to this population. Data were analyzed thematically using NVivo. RESULTS: Women who inject drugs experience multiple stigmas, often simultaneously. These included the external stigma and self-stigma of injection drug use, external gender-related stigma of being a female injecting drug user, and the external stigma of being HIV positive (i.e., among those living with HIV). Stigma led to rejection, social exclusion, low self-esteem, and delay or denial of services at health facilities. CONCLUSION: HIV and harm reduction programs should incorporate interventions that address different forms of stigma among women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya. Addressing stigma will require a combination of individual, social, and structural interventions, such as collective empowerment of injecting drug users, training of healthcare providers on issues and needs of women who inject drugs, peer accompaniment to health facilities, addressing wider social determinants of stigma and discrimination, and expansion of harm reduction interventions to change perceptions of communities towards women who inject drugs.
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spelling pubmed-59704662018-05-30 “Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya Mburu, Gitau Ayon, Sylvia Tsai, Alexander C. Ndimbii, James Wang, Bangyuan Strathdee, Steffanie Seeley, Janet Harm Reduct J Research BACKGROUND: A tenth of all people who inject drugs in Kenya are women, yet their social contexts and experiences remain poorly understood. This paper reports how multiple forms of stigma are experienced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya and the impact that they have on their ability to access essential health services. METHODS: In 2015, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were held with 45 women who inject drugs in two coastal towns. These data were supplemented with in-depth interviews with five individual stakeholders involved in service provision to this population. Data were analyzed thematically using NVivo. RESULTS: Women who inject drugs experience multiple stigmas, often simultaneously. These included the external stigma and self-stigma of injection drug use, external gender-related stigma of being a female injecting drug user, and the external stigma of being HIV positive (i.e., among those living with HIV). Stigma led to rejection, social exclusion, low self-esteem, and delay or denial of services at health facilities. CONCLUSION: HIV and harm reduction programs should incorporate interventions that address different forms of stigma among women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya. Addressing stigma will require a combination of individual, social, and structural interventions, such as collective empowerment of injecting drug users, training of healthcare providers on issues and needs of women who inject drugs, peer accompaniment to health facilities, addressing wider social determinants of stigma and discrimination, and expansion of harm reduction interventions to change perceptions of communities towards women who inject drugs. BioMed Central 2018-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5970466/ /pubmed/29801494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-018-0235-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Mburu, Gitau
Ayon, Sylvia
Tsai, Alexander C.
Ndimbii, James
Wang, Bangyuan
Strathdee, Steffanie
Seeley, Janet
“Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya
title “Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya
title_full “Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya
title_fullStr “Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya
title_full_unstemmed “Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya
title_short “Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya
title_sort “who has ever loved a drug addict? it’s a lie. they think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal kenya
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5970466/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29801494
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-018-0235-9
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