In an article by Peter Hotez, “Stigma: The stealth weapon of NTD,” he discusses the social implications of many NTDs.
For instance, Jorge Alvar and his colleagues at the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently pointed out that women have a higher disease burden from leishmaniasis than men because of reduced health care access, and because of their heightened social isolation from the disfigurement caused by the cutaneous form of the disease, which can prevent a young woman from being permitted to touch her children, enter into marriage, or remain married [3],[9]. Similarly, a team from Groningen University Hospital in the Netherlands has eloquently described how the disfiguring wounds of Buruli ulcer in Africa cause affected individuals to attempt to hide their disease because of the belief that it results from witchcraft or the “evil eye,” and as a result such individuals seek neither medical attention nor employment [3],[9].
During my time studying in South Africa, HIV was, and still is, very stigmatized to the point that men and women did not want to get HIV tests. There are also practical reasons for their reluctance to get tested for HIV, since drug access is not yet universal in R.S.A. the positive diagnosis would only tell them that they are going to die. The diagnosis of HIV could help prevent the spread of HIV, but the individual has little incentive to know that they are living with such a highly stigmatized disease.
Women in Medical Entomology 