Meredith Lepore of TheGrindstone, a blog about women and the workplace, questions whether companies and employees are prepared to deal with the stigma of AIDS at the office.
It has been 18 years since Tom Hanks won an Oscar for portraying a gay man who was fired after he contracted AIDS in the film Philadelphia. But as we approach AIDS Day 2011 this Thursday, the negative stigma surrounding AIDS in the workplace has not come as far as we might have hoped. The epidemic has plateaued in the US, but there are still about 1.1 million people infected with HIV here. And about 20 percent do not know they are infected.
Those are the ones that more likely will infect other people. Since the world’s first AIDS case was reported 30 years ago, the US has seen close to 600,000 AIDS-related deaths. These numbers indicate that you will, in one way or another, know someone or know of someone who has HIV or AIDS and it may very well be in your place of employment. Are companies doing enough to prepare for this?
