The inaugural lecturer and Professor of Health and Illness, Christian Ewhrudjakpor (5th left) flanked by the Vice Chancellor of DELSU, Prof. Victor Peretomode (5th right) and other principal officers of the University during the 64th in the series of inaugural lectures of DELSU

A Professor of Sociology of Health and Illness, Christian Ewhrudjakpor has posited that the prevalent wrong practice of stigmatizing victims of certain diseases could only be tackled with the individual and collective efforts of all stakeholders.

Ewhrudjakpor, a lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Psychology, Delta State University, Abraka, also drew attention to the negative consequences of stigimatizing some labelled diseases, calling for genuine efforts to reverse the trend.

“It is high time we individually and collectively pulled down these barriers faced by the stigmatized persons, family and groups”, the University Don declared while delivering the 64th in the series of inaugural lectures of DELSU held at the Abraka campus of the institution on Thursday, with the title, Diseases and Labels: Destigmatizing the Stigmatized.

He observed that certain diseases such as tuberculosis, leprosy, sexually transmitted infections and mental illness have attracted diverse culture specific labels in Nigeria while their sufferers have been subjected to the burden of discrimination, rejection and exclusion from the mainstream society.

Ewhrudjakpor, who is currently the Dean of the faculty of the Social Sciences at DELSU, refuted claims that stigmas were pathological, insisting that they were results of labels underpinned by several significant factors such as knowledge, poverty, personal appearance, family and culture.

“Therefore, our stigma theory states that a diseased individual’s knowledge, personality, economic status and family background are determinants of who gets stigmatized in the society”, the inaugural lecturer explained.

According to him, the burden of stigma on the sufferers and their families are numerous because “the residual sociological challenges associated with stigmatized diseases inevitably span the medical, psychological, economic and socio-cultural aspects of the individual, the family and the rest of the society”.

“Economically, the family members of these stigmatized diseases spend endlessly on sufferers… because these sufferers are usually excluded from paid employment in society. When they engage in private commercial activity like petty trade, people are scared to buy or patronize them, and this further discourages them from other commercial activities”, Ewhrudjakpor observed.

To reverse the trend at the individual level, he recommended that all stigmatized persons must display acts of self-confidence in order for other members of the society to depend on them.

At the collective level, the professor advocated that family members should be strongly knitted together to avoid dismembership due to debilitating disease conditions, commumity leaders should discourage the social exclusion of treated sufferers, government should formulate and enforce far-reaching policies against stigmatization and media practitioners should be discouraged from publishing or broadcasting stories that could fan the embers of prejudice and hatred on the basis of disease infestation.