Living with HIV and AIDS: Perspectives of Women and Men in Fiji

This report presents the results of the study entitled Discourses and Representations of HIV in Fiji and their Impact on the Experience of People Living with HIV and AIDS.

This study, as originally conceived and described in the research proposal submitted to the Fiji National Health Research Committee, aimed to investigate the discourses and representations of HIV and AIDS in Fiji and how they impact the experience of people living with the virus. This research had three initial objectives: 1) to examine how HIV and AIDS had been presented and represented at the institutional level (government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), churches) since the advent of the first reported cases in 1989; 2) to explore how the population of Fiji perceived and interpreted the infection; 3) to analyse the biographies of people living with HIV and how they experienced the virus in the Fijian context.