When your colleague has AIDS/HIV

If you found out that one of your co-workers has AIDS/HIV, what would you do? How would you react? Would you request their immediate firing? Would you confront them, gossip about them or completely ostracize them? Or would it be a non-issue for you? Every day around the globe co-workers grapple with this question. {{more}}

In the last decade, many countries have made it a point to launch major awareness campaigns to educate the public on what it means to live and work with co-workers who have contracted AIDS/HIV. Unfortunately, that education awareness has not trickled down to many third world countries and their people.

We are a global society. People from other countries with AIDS/HIV freely travel and they work and interact with others and no one ever knows. Yet, the minute we realize that a neighbour or co-worker has AIDS/HIV, the guards go up and people run.

Besides sexual contact, blood transfusions and shared needle drug use, AIDS/HIV can be contracted when infected body fluid enters an open wound, but many people are not in that situation in their workplaces. In fact, even when co-workers are in those environments, there are precautions that can be taken that actively prevent and reduce such incidents. However, fear of being infected with an incurable disease and the societal stigma associated with AIDS/HIV is enough to make some people unmovable.

Being very thin or experiencing sudden weight loss does not automatically equal an AIDS/HIV diagnosis either. Some co-workers don’t wait for a diagnosis; they make assumptions when they see weight loss. There are many people with AIDS/HIV who take their medication to control the disease and look perfectly healthy.

In many countries, it’s illegal to discriminate against someone and deny them work simply because they have AIDS/HIV. People with AIDS/HIV have a right to earn a living and take care of themselves and their families, and they can do that without putting their co-workers at risk. We should not rush to judgment about how they got it either; it’s none of our business; just allow them to be treated like people.

If you would like to learn more about AIDS/HIV, visit the website below.

http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/how-you-get-hiv-aids/

Karen Hinds is “The Workplace Success Expert.” For a FREE SPECIAL REPORT on Avoiding Career Killers in the Workplace, send an email to info@workplacesuccess.com
Visit online at www.workplacesuccess.com