The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Immigrant African Women: Implication for Social Work Practice

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation is an opportunity for me to extend my regards to my research supervisor, my beloved friends, and my family for their untiring support that they furnished throughout my research. I am grateful to them for their belief in me and the guidance that they provided me without which I would have never been able to work on and complete this research. It also signifies my own views and does not closely relate to the university.

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DECLARATION

I, (), would like to declare that all contents included in this study stand for my individual work without any aid, and this proposal has not been submitted for any examination at academic as well as professional level, previously. It is also represents my very own views and not essentially those that are associated with other university.

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Abstract

The researches into living with AIDS/HIV dates mainly to focus on the quality of life and there is limited process of adjustment and the practice of social work for that group. In the United Kingdom, the numbers of African women living with AIDS/HIV is a growing concern still very little is known about the adjustment experiences for these women. This study therefore, explores aspects to find out the role of social work to intervene for supporting the immigrant African women. Therefore, this study will take the systematic approach in which there will be a wide range of relevant literature which relates to the matter of subjects such as Google scholar, journals, books, Pub med, CINHAL plus, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Bio Med Central, EBSCO host, PEDro, CINAHL, AMED and personal experiences through government documents, agencies, and informal conversation, along with personal working experience with individuals suffering from AIDS/HIV victims who will be consulted for the analysis. For the advance research failure on the African HIV/AIDS may leave a lot of social workers who are prepared inadequately for responding to the experiences and needs of the African women. Finally, it was stated that for the African immigrants the empirical literature is insufficient for designing the interventions for the treatment, the social work researchers have the entity of making considerably scholarly contribution for exploring the areas causing most concern of these group with regard to treatment and prevention (health and well-being) as well as barriers to services and explore how immigration policies meet the needs of these individuals. The refugees and immigrants from the country is prevalent (> 1%) who are vulnerable because of higher rates of HIV prevalence in their country homes and due to the high levels of HIV related with the stigma. The discrimination and stigma related to the HIV and are linked with the delays or avoidance in seeking for testing HIV, disclosure delays of the seropositive status to the practitioners and partners also with the rejections and postponement of treatment. The HIV-related stigma effects are usually magnified among the vulnerable social minority groups. The UK guidelines (Rogstad, & Palfreeman, 2006) ...