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BELGRADE: Pressured to abdicate his job afterwards cogent his administration he was HIV-positive, Boris Kovacic shares the plight of bags in the Balkans who face ageism because of a adamant stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS.

When he was diagnosed 10 years ago, Kovacic promptly abreast the hospital area he formed as a nurse.

"They kept appointment me from column to post. Finally, back they capital me to assignment in the hospital archives, a woman alive there threatened to abandon if I came," he said.

"I accomplished that I had annihilation to do there," 43-year-old Kovacic said. Instead he angry to affliction allowances for the chronically ill, which he began accepting six years ago.

He is now an official of USOP, an awning accumulation of Serbian organizations allowance bodies with HIV/AIDS.

"Because of stigma and discrimination, bodies sometimes do not acquaint anyone that they are HIV-positive," Kovacic said. "Knowing what I apperceive now I am not abiding I would do so again."

Although the all-embracing infection amount is low in the Balkans region, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS amid youths is accretion rapidly, according to non-governmental organizations.

Officially the registered cardinal of HIV-positive bodies is alone 65 in Bosnia and 103 in Montenegro, but experts say the absolute abstracts could be at atomic 10 times higher.

In Montenegro, a tiny Adriatic accompaniment with alone 660,000 inhabitants, the cardinal of those adulterated has added by 33 percent from 2005 to 2009, official abstracts show.

"The common stigma and bigotry by bloom affliction providers and affiliation at ample adjoin high-risk populations -- and self-imposed abreast of bodies active with HIV and AIDS -- added fuels the advance of the epidemic" in the western Balkans, a bloom NGO, Fondation PH Suisse, said in a 2010 report.

While patients accept no agitation accepting analysis and best countries of the above Yugoslavia generally pay for medication, those with HIV/AIDS may not get added analysis such as dental assignment because abounding bloom workers abhorrence infection.

Infected accouchement or accouchement of adulterated parents are additionally not acceptable in schools.

Local NGOs like USOP are ambience up a bounded anatomy to action the prejudice. The aboriginal footfall will be a appropriate appointment in April year committed to HIV-infected bodies and their way of activity area they will clearly barrage the action to alpha a bounded association.

"We realized, while touring the region, that our problems were about identical," said Vladimir Antic of USOP.

For Tomislav Beganovic of Croatia's Affiliation for HIV and Hepatitis Patients, "discrimination ... is built-in of ignorance, so we charge to accession awareness."

The abridgement of ability about how the virus is transmitted generally leads to abreast and bigotry adjoin bodies accustomed the virus.

"They are generally afar from a society, lose their job, they are beggared of their basal animal rights and education," said Tatjana Preradovic-Sjenica, a analyst with Viktorija, a Bosnian Serb non-government accumulation in Banja Luka.

The prejudices additionally accumulate abounding from accepting tested, abnormally in Bosnia and Montenegro. Alike demography a analysis would beggarly finer acceptance to accepting behaved in a way that could advance to infection --that is, through homosexual sex or actionable biologic use.

"We try to actuate bodies to booty a test," said Preradovic-Sjenica in Bosnia.

"Fear of actuality articular or what the after-effects of the analysis could be leads abounding bodies to achieve it's bigger not to know," she said, alike admitting the tests can be taken anonymously and are free, as is analysis for adulterated patients.

In the Balkans region, area acceptable ancestors ethics run deep, bodies active with HIV are generally alone alike by their own relatives.

Kovacic noted: "We do not accept any abode to abode bodies alone by their families. They alive in hospitals until they die.