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D Enis Leutloff of Halle an der Saale is one of the posters of the World Conference on AIDS in Amsterdam. It's not that his face is displayed throughout the city, but on the stand of the German Aids-Hilfe in the exhibition and congress center, he immediately draws attention of all. "Treat me well!", Says on his poster. And underneath: "Discrimination in health makes people sick." Leutloff shows his face for a campaign that will soon be seen in Germany and to draw attention to the fact that doctors often refuse HIV treatment for a treatment learn the viral infection.
Like many people who have to live with the HI virus, Leutloff has also had negative experiences in German doctors' offices and in hospitals. The thirty-seven-year-old man has known for nine years that he is HIV-positive. He was probably infected in 2008, how exactly he can not say. "I've always been very careful and paid attention to protection," he says. Eventually, he stopped thinking about what and how, and accepted the infection as a fact. At the end of the year 2010, he started therapy, since he is taking antiretroviral drugs, it is no longer contagious. This is a medical fact scientifically proven for the first time in 2008.
"When I came out of the emergency, I felt like a leper"
"At first I did not feel like a leper" I did not like drugs, "says Leutloff. Nausea, vomiting, chills and fever were side effects that eventually led his partner to take him to the emergency room. "There, a young medical badistant tried to get me blood, which he was not very good at." He sipped a little and did not wear gloves. "Then he asked for possible medications, Leutloff he called, and the doctor looked for what it was.
"But you should have told me you have HIV, you have to do it," said the doctor.
"No, I'm not," Leuthoff replied. "Besides, you could have worn gloves."
The doctor then told him that he would not continue to treat him because the doctor-patient relationship was disrupted. In general, according to the doctor, he is himself responsible for his infection. Now he just has to live with the side effects of the drugs. "When I left the emergency room, I felt like a leper."
Still the last appointments of the day
The Leutloff experiment is not an isolated case. Almost all people infected with HIV at the German AIDS Aid stand in Amsterdam can tell a similar story, even Silke Klumb, general manager, who herself is not HIV positive. When she had to undergo surgery in Berlin in 2015, the attending physician specifically postponed the appointment so that a colleague had to step in for him. Silke Klumb had only told her in the preliminary interview that she was working for Aids-Hilfe. "The conversation fell immediately," says the forty-nine year old. "I could see that he did not want me anymore as a patient."
How many times people with HIV still have bad experiences can not be quantified. The only study on stigma and discrimination in health care is called "Positive Voices" and is six years old. 1148 HIV-positive people were interviewed. One in five said they had been denied health services at least once in the past 12 months for their HIV infection. This included rejection in the office of a doctor, especially in a dental office. It seems more common that HIV patients have the last appointment of the day.
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