a piece of the action: winning the fight for access to women in the hiv/aids epidemic in africa
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A Piece of the Action: Winning the Fight for Access to Women in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Africa. Rachel Chapman, Ph.D. University of Washington, Seattle Department of Anthropology. 2013: Conferência Género e Pluralismo Terapêutico Acesso das Mulheres ao Sector de Saúde Privado em África. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Rachel Chapman, Ph.D.University of Washington,SeattleDepartment of Anthropology
A Piece of the Action: Winning the Fight for Access to Women in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Africa
2013: ConferênciaGénero e Pluralismo Terapêutico
Acesso das Mulheres ao Sector de Saúde Privado em África
• Urgent work in a complex moment…
• How did we get here?
• When did public health care get so private?
Recent Roots 1960s-1970s:Primary Health Care (PHC) Movement goes
GLOBAL• 1975: WHO recognizes
traditional healing as important and valuable
• 1978: Alma Ata Conference – Primary Health Care Concept
• Health For All by 2000
Primary Health Care (PHC) Concept
• Low technology• Appropriate
technology• Rural based• Prevention• Local providers• Health care is a right
African Independence MovementsNationalization of Health, Land, Production
Health for All as symbol of social transformation
1980s – PresentMarket Fundamentalism and Austerity
• Neo-Liberal Economic Policies (Reagan, Thatcher)
• Characterized - Free market, de-regulation
• Implemented - Economic Restructuring– Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)– Debt Repayment/Foreign Investment – Erosion of social safety nets– Privatization
(water, oil, education, health…)
• PHC problems financing
1993: World Bank “Investing in Health”
1) Health = commodity International health care = business
2) Justification = Irresponsible debt/consumer responsibility- Cost recovery = FEES
• - Cost effectiveness = $ saved per intervention, - life measured in work years lost (DALYs) - weighed in relation to GNP
3) Conditions = governance and democracy = global “business managed democracy” (Beder 2004)
4) World Bank surpasses WHO as health policy
What follows the gutting, commoditization and privatization of health?• Investment in multi-tiered system
and growing health inequalities
• Rollback in primary health care goals and advances
• Contraction of public services
• Draining of public resources into private sector (often under the table)
• Explosion of NGOs, other private providers to fill the gap (civil society discourse)
Aid can be a burden: Tanzania, 2000-2002
Source: Foreign Policy, Ranking the Rich 2004
SAPs weakened national health systems in Africa
Ministry of Health budgets slashed causing:
• Hiring and Salary Caps = Inadequate workforce (numbers, salaries, morale)
• Poorly maintained and equipped health facilities
• Inadequate transport, communication
• Weak procurement and distribution of medicines and supplies, stock ruptures, black market value
Global Distribution of Health Workers Selected Countries (WHO minimum 20)
Country Doctors (per 100,000)
Nurses (per 100,000)
Malawi 2 59 Tanzania 2 37 Mozambique 3 12 Ethiopia 3 21 Rwanda 5 42 Uganda 8 61 Zambia 12 174 Kenya 14 114 Zimbabwe 16 72 South Africa 77 408 Brazil 115 384 Cuba 591 744 Source: World Health Report, 2006
Case StudyPrivatization, Gender and Health in Mozambique
• Diverting cash resources in strapped households
• Need for cash increases micro-exploitation (sex-work, crime)
• Sapping highest skilled providers fleeing public sector conditions and salary freezes to private practice and NGOs “white follows green”$$$
• Unsupervised, unsustainable and uneven care through NGO pet projects,
• Thriving informal sector “dumba nenge” for drugs, treatments , providers (markets, traveling vendors, moonlighters)
Other forms of private care?
Professionalization of Indigenous Healersthrough AMETRAMO and Monetization of
services
Proliferation of Pentecostal and Zionist churches offering healing without official “fees”, majority of converts poor women
AMETRAMO Prices and Treatment List price women out
• Scanned Ametramo list
How does HIV/AIDS “gender” poverty and vulnerability?
Extended families (women) expected to provide care through
• “economy of affection” and
• “hidden health care system”
• Neither can fill in for eroded social welfare institutions. Both give way under pressure of poverty and disease.
Zimbabwe
Economy of Affection1. social protection
2. direct face-to-face reciprocities to get things done among family and neighbors
3. informal and largely invisible political economy
4. informal parallel institutions that buffer from the whims of the market and protect from falling into the wide gap left by the weakened and fettered arms of the state under neoliberal economic policy (Hyden 2006)
• Churches• Fostering• Rotating labor parties• Tithing• Collective farms• Food sharing• Any others?
How is austerity gendered?• counter-geographies of
survival: micro
1. “regrouping …around the pooled resources of households and, especially, the survival skills and desperate ingenuity of women”
2. Hyper-masculinity and the rise of “nightmarish crime and predatory gangs”
3. explosion of male and female sex-work in urban and rural settings
UNAIDS 2010 Report on the global AIDS epidemic
Despite overall MMR decreases:HIV Played a Major Role in Increasing MMR
mostly Sub-Saharan Africa
NO SURPRISE…
Overlapping Global Shadows• Global Maternal
Mortality (WHO)• Global HIV Infection• (UNAIDS)
Overlapping Shadows?• Global Maternal
Mortality (WHO)• Global HIV Infection• (UNAIDS)
HIV and Maternal Mortality(UNICEF. 2010. Interagency Estimates of Maternal Mortality Levels and Trends: 1990-2008)
• Direct: associated increase in pregnancy complications – anemia,– post-partum hemorrhage– puerperal sepsis
• Indirect: increased susceptibility to opportunistic infections – Pneumocystis carinii– pneumonia, – tuberculosis – malaria.(McIntyre. 2003)
• Maternal HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa
• HIV accounts for an estimated 10X increased risk of maternal death, esp. symptomatic women (Moodley, et al. 2011)
Early Response: Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT)
• pregnant women living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa who received antiretroviral drugs to prevent transmission of HIV to their children:
• 2005: 15%• 2009: 54%
Bias: women as• Reproducers and• Fetal environments
• Around the world to Mozambique with HAI
My Research Project1. Why don’t women with access to prenatal care get
prenatal care?
2. What is the cause of underutilization of public prenatal clinic services?
3. What are all reproductive health options for women in post-war Mozambique?
4. How does inequality get into Mozambican women’s bodies?
5. What are the unexamined costs of Western policies of economic austerity and privatization?
6. What can be done about it?
Guro Tambara
Chemba
MaringueMacossa
Sussundenga
Machaze
Machanga
Muanza
Cheringoma
Chibabava
HF Providing HAART (new) 1 (1)
PLWHA Registered (%) 2,000 (1)
Eligible in HAART (%) 94 (0)
HAI/MOH HIV Treatment Expansion Plan through NGO/public sector collaboration
2003
2003
Guro Tambara
Chemba
MaringueMacossa
Sussundenga
Machaze
Machanga
Muanza
Cheringoma
Chibabava
HF Providing HAART (new) 2 (1)
PLWHA Registered (%) 7,300 (2)
Eligible in HAART (%) 600 (1)
HIV Treatment Expansion Plan2004
2003
2004
Guro Tambara
Chemba
MaringueMacossa
Sussundenga
Machaze
Machanga
Muanza
Cheringoma
Chibabava
HF Providing HAART (new) 5 (3)
PLWHA Registered (%) 18,600 (5)
Eligible in HAART (%) 2,500 (4)
HIV Treatment Expansion Plan2005
2003 2005
2004
Guro Tambara
Chemba
MaringueMacossa
Sussundenga
Machaze
Machanga
Muanza
Cheringoma
Chibabava
HF Providing HAART (new)
17 (13) PLWHA Registered (%)
36,270 (9) Eligible in HAART (%)
5,250 (9) Children <15 y in HAART (% of those in HAART)
420 (8)
HIV Treatment Expansion Plan2006
2003 2004 2005 2006
Guro Tambara
Chemba
MaringueMacossa
Sussundenga
Machaze
Machanga
Muanza
Cheringoma
Chibabava
HF Providing HAART (new)
47 (30) PLWHA Registered (%)
63,390 (16) Eligible in HAART (%)
13,225 (22) Children <15 y in HAART (% of those in HAART)
1,323 (10)
HIV Treatment Expansion Plan2007
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Guro Tambara
Chemba
MaringueMacossa
Sussundenga
Machaze
Machanga
Muanza
Cheringoma
Chibabava
HF Providing HAART (new) 53 (7)
PLWHA Registered (%) 100,490 (25)
Eligible in HAART (%) 23,903 (40)
Children <15 y in HAART (% of those in HAART)
3,585 (15)
HIV Treatment Expansion Plan2008
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
• 87 facilities offering HAART (55 March 2008)
• 180,000 PLWHA registered for HIV care (49% of the infected) (92,600 March 2008)
• 45,000 in HAART (64% of eligible)
(22,000 Mar. 2008, 31% of eligible)
• All HUs with TB treatment in Sofala and Manica testing for HIV and strengthening of TB screening in PLWHA
• 202 CPN with PMTCT (156 March
2008)
2009 Treatment PlanManica and Sofala scale-up
through of existing public network Guro Tambara
Chemba
MaringueMacossa
Sussundenga
Machaze
Machanga
Muanza
Cheringoma
Chibabava
CS
HCB HR
HPC
HG Proj.
THE PROBLEM - Major loss to follow-up (LTFU):
women and exposed infants drop from programs to treat maternal HIV and prevent maternal to child transmission at any step along the “treatment cascade”
pMTCT strategy in MozambiqueFigure 1. PMTCT patient flow
Children followed in pediatric clinic
and tested for HIV at 18 months
Mothers breastfeed
through 6 months, followed by
“rapid transition”to regular foodMaternity
Woman / newborn given dose of NVP
Pre-natal consultPregnant woman counseled
and tested for HIV
Treatment center (if exists): HIV clinical and
laboratory staging
Woman does not need ART
Woman starts ART
Dueling Hypotheses:Why high loss to follow up rates?
Inadequate counseling Authorized and unauthorized
fees Poor quality, rude staff Slow or lost tests Too many appointments Poor linkages within programs
at the health facility Cost of transport and
inaccessibility of clinics Drug stock ruptures
Stigma, and discrimination,
Gender conflict, violence
Lack of basic resources, food, social support
Distance and transport fees
Religious, cultural healing beliefs and practices
Health Systems contributing factors
Structural/Social / Cultural contributing factors
BOTH INADEQUATE: WHY?Depoliticize, Individualize, Medicalize
High Cost of Austerity Economics
• Cutting public sector• Privatization• Cutting services• Lay-offs, salary cuts and
freezes• Selective and vertical
interventions
• Remove price subsidies• Fees for services• Erodes social safety nets• Abolish social security
Ignore failed structural adjustment programs (SAPS)
Overlook free market fundamentalist cost-shifting to women
Costs of Austerity to Women’s Health
• Macro: Erosion of health system budget, facilities, staff, salaries, basic resources, services, morale
• Meso: Institution of vertical,selective health programs silo-ing focus and resources fromIntegrated primary care
• Micro: destroys social fabric as people eek out survival from overburdened household
resources, especially social-reproductive labor of women, violence, crime, corruption as individuals seek to resist impoverishment
HIV care and treatment scale up exposes costs of Austerity Economics
• AIDS-related maternal mortality
• Health systems failures• AIDS-related stigma
= tangible consequences of “trickle-down” politics which have immiserated African
households and public sectors that serve them
New Research Question:
• What accounts for loss to follow-up?
• Where are all the pregnant HIV+ women going after they test positive?
Preliminary Findings1. Stigma and fear
2. Domestic violence surrounds negotiation of disclosure, loss of social support
3. food and drug insecurity = new hungers, new conflicts and new markets, new resistances
4. Confusion regarding pregnancy and seropositive status, multiple testing, changing clinics, ghost patients
5. Shock, memory, negotiating identity post-test, failure of counseling
• HIV testing and treatment complicates women’s access to clinical care.
♀g arrives for 1ra pre-natal visit with
SMI nurse
Day 1
HIVRapi
d Test
Blood is sent to lab for CD4 test
Reception activista opens a chart for
♀g+
Day 1
SMI activista accompanies ♀g+ to reception
SMI nurse evaluates the urgency of treatment and determines WHO clinical
stage (I-IV)
Day 1
Reception activista accompanies ♀g+ back to SMI nurse
CD4 count
♀g+ returns to meet with SMI nurse to get CD4 results
≥ Day 3
I-IIStag
e
III-IV
♀g+ receives AZT & duNVP > 250
+
SMI nurse prescribes CTZ and biochemical blood
tests
≥ Day 3
Day 4 or 5TARV
committee reviews
case to determin
e eligibility
TARV ?
Evaluation with a MD or
TM (on Fridays
only)
~1-4 weeks after diagnosis
Social worker gives ♀g+ the
TARV prescription
~1-4 weeks after diagnosis
≤ 250
DOT for the first 14 days of treatment
PTV
Day 1
Day 1
no
yes
Health Center Munhava ♀g+ PTV Flow
At 28 weeks
♀g+ takes sdNVPContractions start
Labor Starts At Home
Duovir (AZT+3TC)DuringlLabor
At Hospital Maternity
AZTFor one week postpartum
In The Home
Children get: sdNVP & AZT
Postpartum
Picks up medicines in the pharmacy
~ 1- 5 weeks later ♀g+ starts 3 phases of
adherence counseling with a social worker (takes
1-3 weeks)
Phase 3
Phase 2
Phase 1
New collaboration:Option B+ (2012 WHO Guidelines)
1. Starting triple therapy ART directly after testing rather than waiting (test and treat)
Option A vs. Option B+
Pregnant woman comes to ANC visit
Woman tested for HIV
HIV chart opened in HIV
clinic
Draw CD4
CD4 <350
CD4 >350
Counseling visits, clinician
visits
Counseling visits, clinician
visits
Start ART
StartAZT+sdN
VP
Draw CD4CD4 <350
CD4 >350 Stop ART 1 week after breastfeeding
Continue ART lifelongStart ART
Woman HIV+
Benefits of Option B+1. simplification of regimen and
service delivery and harmonization with ART programs,
2. protection against mother-to-child transmission in future pregnancies,
3. continuing prevention benefit against sexual transmission to serodiscordant partners,
4. avoids stopping and starting
of ARV drugs
Not enough!Trojan Horse of ART Scale-Up
• Quality HIV care and services are only possible within context of building strong, sustainable, public sector health systems
and securing householdability to generate basic health
action agenda: impeded by the conditions of austerity and clears path for privatization
• “The is clear. To get Millennium Development Goal 5 on track by reducing the contribution of AIDS to maternal mortality,
• we must prevent HIV infection in women and girls, prevent unwanted pregnancies, expand HIV testing and counseling,
• accelerate initiation of antiretroviral treatment in pregnant women who are HIV-positive, and strengthen service delivery and integration of HIV care and obstetric services, along with data collection to track progress.” (Motley, et al. 2011)
Why do we need a public system to scale-up ART treatment to pregnant women?
1. If health care is a right and should be affordable it cannot also be for profit.
2. The organization, integration and sustainability needed for scale-up cannot be achieved through a patchwork system with different protocols and drug regimes.
3. The majority of impoverished people use the public sector in some capacity despite quality.
4. If health care is a right, a public system has some mechanisms for accountability.
Is privatization a risk to the scale-up of ART for pregnant women in Mozambique?
1. Increasing health inequalities in a many - tiered system
2. Demobilization of support from enfranchised and resourced for the disenfranchised and impoverished
3. Resources sapped often under the table from public to private sector (moonlighting, brain drain, informal markets for drugs and services, unauthorized fees)
4. Naturalizes cost shifting from public to domestic sphere through household labor and erosion of labor rights (fees for service, insurance schemes, for-profit NGOs, performance based financing)
5. Blames failure to produce health on consumers and providers
Maybe women are not “lost” to follow-up
New Commons Women join Pentecostal and African
Independent Churches• lively worship communities,• women’s social and business groups, • tithing, • visits and prayer for those who are sick at home, • communal gardens• a range of healing approaches for which they are not asked to pay a fee,• Therapy for infertility or multiple infants deaths and chronic illness (HIV?)• On site birthing facilities• mulheres d’espiritos (wives of spirits) escape the endless cycle of fees and
indebtedness acquired while seeking treatment with curandeiros
• solace and succor
• Decommodification of healing
Global Burden of Absolute HIV Deathsworld mapper (2007)
Global Public Health Spending – enough said!
Worldmapper
Action Research Agenda Medical Anthropologists• Study Up to Track Cultures of Abandonment and
“Zombie Economic Policies”, Who Calls the Shots? • Evaluate Alternative Health Resources• Track patterns of resort in shifting plural health systems
with eye to resistance, human and drug• Seek out and advocate for the politics and practices of
new commons, social movements, resistance outside the formal economic system revealing global connections for action
• Pay attention to micro shifting household economies under austerity, and find new measures for the cost of cost shifting
• Make links between the dehumanizing politics, processes of austerity in Europe, Americas and Africa
BASTA!
Muita Obrigada!University of Washington
Mozambique Ministry of HealthManica and Sofala Provincial DPSHealth Alliance International
Beatrice ThomeJames PfeifferWendy Johnson
Javelina AguiarLucia LazaroVictoria Porthe