Abstract

GUTIERREZ RIVERA, Lirio del Carmen. Opportunities and Possibilities from Illness: Volunteer Experiences among People Infected with HIV/AIDS. univ.humanist. [online]. 2007, n.64, pp.93-112. ISSN 0120-4807.

All illnesses can be interpreted. In the case of HIV/AIDS, experience and interpretation are intercepted by meanings that recluse, insulate and morally expose patients and their social networks. Volunteers stand out in these networks, because they are the only ones that continue to have contact with patients. In many cases, they are stigmatized. This article is about the experience of female volunteers with people infected with HIV/AIDS. The phenomenological experience allows studying their perceptions, verifications and modifications of the disease. The results show the following: first, HIV/AIDS is an opportunity to thank a past event; second, it is an opportunity to construct, through altruism, a space of opportunity for them and their patients; third, HIV/AIDS shows social shortages. Although this experience does not construct political identities or legal discourse, it confronts and inverts negative perceptions of the disease through actions of care whose essential component is love, altruism and brotherhood.

Keywords : volunteers; HIV/AIDS; Subjectivity; Experience and Perception of Illness; acquired immune deficiency syndrome; Caregivers; Subjectivity.

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