The emergence of HIV in South AfricaJust like the emergence of HIV in the United States, the first cases of HIV in South Africa were discovered in the homosexual male population. In 1983, two South African gay men died from opportunistic infections associated with autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). In the months that followed, many more gay men became infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), leading the South African population to view AIDS as a disease that only infected gay men. Unfortunately, this misperception has created a stigma around HIV infection. The media stuck to the idea that HIV and AIDS was largely a disease of the gay population and vilified the infection by promulgating negative stereotypes of men who have sex with men (MSM). . fear campaigns and disinformation. The African National Congress, exiled from South Africa in the 1980s, reported that HIV could be grown in the laboratory; others said it was spread by tear gas sprayed by police or by the deliberate infection of "city women", sex workers who served local communities. The apartheid government seized on this information, using the stigma associated with MSM populations to push the issue of HIV to the back burner. At the same time, about 100 people being treated for hemophilia were diagnosed with HIV, caused by the use of contaminated blood or blood products used to treat the disease; these people were seen by the media and the government as “innocent victims,” in stark contrast to the MSM population, whose infections were seen as having been caused by their own actions. The apartheid government, at that time, was fed up with the rapid spread of HIV middle of paper......it is considered a high-risk profession for many reasons, the most important of which is due to the rapid and easy transmission of HIV. In both South Africa and Uganda, sex workers constitute a marginalized and stigmatized population. A study showed that adequate access to health services for HIV-positive sex workers in South Africa and Uganda is very limited, far below that available to the general public: when providers at sex workers' two countries were informed that patients were working in the sex trade, many were refused treatment, had to endure rude or derogatory remarks, or were charged much higher prices for a service that would be provided to someone else at a lower cost. The result of this stigma in the health care sector is that sex workers delay care until it is too late, thereby accelerating the spread of HIV among their clients...