Health, wellbeing and care Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform

Patronage, partnership, voluntarism: Community-based health insurance and the improvisation of universal health coverage in Senegal

The turn towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the past decade raises the question of the role of the state, following years of state withdrawal and a fragmented approach to public health. Senegal introduced its version of UHC, Couverture Maladie…

West Africa Hub

2023

Past horrors, present struggles: the role of stigma in the association between war experiences and psychosocial adjustment among former child soldiers in Sierra Leone.

We examined the role of stigma (manifest in discrimination as well as lower levels of community and family acceptance) in the relationship between war-related experiences and psychosocial adjustment (depression, anxiety, hostility and adaptive behaviors).

West Africa Hub

2010

Overlaps and Disconnects in Reproductive Health Care: Global Policies, National Programs, and the Micropolitics of Reproduction in Northern Senegal

This article explores three arenas of contemporary discourse about reproductive health and family planning. Using Senegal as a case study, it highlights the significant overlaps and disconnects among global reproductive health policy, national priorities and programs, and the biopolitics of…

West Africa Hub

2007

Non-use of modern contraceptives among women in humanitarian contexts: evidence from a qualitative study in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.

The continuing conflict situation in Nigeria have created over 2 million displaced persons. In 2019, women and children accounted for about 80% of the internally displaced population in the country. Displacement increases the need for reproductive health services. This study…

West Africa Hub

2023

Neoliberal Reform and Health Dilemmas

In this article, the author traces the links among neoliberalism, regional ecological decline, and the dynamics of therapeutic processes in rural Senegal. By focusing on illness management in a small rural community, the article explores how economic reform is mediated…

West Africa Hub

2008

Modern marriage, men’s extramarital sex, and HIV risk in southeastern Nigeria

For women in Nigeria, as in many settings, simply being married can contribute to the risk of contracting HIV. This article considers men’s extramarital sexual behavior in the context of modern marriage in southeastern Nigeria. The results indicate that the…

West Africa Hub

2007

Metrics of Survival: Post-Abortion Care and Reproductive Rights in Senegal.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Senegal between 2010 and 2011, the author demonstrates how health professionals have deployed indicators such as number of women and abortion type treated in government hospitals to demonstrate commitment to global mandates on reproductive…

West Africa Hub

2019

Men’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth in Sierra Leone: Reexamining definitions of “male partner involvement”.

In recent decades, global health researchers and policy makers have advocated for men’s increased involvement in pregnancy and childbirth with the goal of improving maternal health outcomes. However, such approaches often fail to account for the culturally valid and gendered…

West Africa Hub

2020

Malevolent ogbanje: recurrent reincarnation or sickle cell disease?.

The Igbo of Nigeria believe that everyone is ogbanje (reincarnates) but malevolent ogbanje differ from others in being revenge-driven, chronically ill and engaging in repeated cycles of birth, death and reincarnation. This study examined culturally defined symptoms of 100 children…

West Africa Hub

2001

‘It’s raining stones’: stigma, violence and HIV vulnerability among men who have sex with men in Dakar, Senegal

In Dakar, Senegal, a study conducted by researchers from Cheikh Anta Diop University, the Senegal National Council Against AIDS, and the Horizons Program elicited quantitative and qualitative data about the needs, behaviours, knowledge, and attitudes of men who have sex…

West Africa Hub

2003

Interembodiment, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Health

This article introduces the concept of interembodiment, animated bodily entanglements between people, to illustrate the shared sense of illness that transgresses discrete biological bodies.

West Africa Hub

2022

HIV, embodied secrets, and intimate labour in northern Nigeria

This article explores how HIV-positive women manage secrets through the use of their bodies. Women conspicuously enhance their beauty in an attempt to defend themselves against the violence of social exclusion.

West Africa Hub

2014

Exceptional suffering? Enumeration and vernacular accounting in the HIV-positive experience.

Drawing on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone, I highlight the recursive relationship between Sierra Leone as an exemplary setting and HIV as an exceptional disease. Through this relationship, I examine how HIV-positive individuals rely on both…

West Africa Hub

2012

Envisioning, Evaluating and Co-Enacting Performance in Global Health Interventions: Ethnographic Insights from Senegal

The notion of performance has become dominant in health programming, whether being embodied through pay-for-performance schemes or through other incentive-based interventions. In this article, we seek to unpack the idea of performance and performing in a dialogical fashion between field-based…

West Africa Hub

2019

Doing gender, doing alcohol: The paradox of gendered drinking practices among young Nigerians.

In traditional Nigeria, consumption norms prohibited women’s and young people’s alcohol use. Nowadays, young men and women use alcohol, and many enact identities with heavy drinking. This study uses gender performance theory and interviews/focus group data from 72 young Nigerian…

West Africa Hub

2022

Discriminate biopower and everyday biopolitics: views on sickle cell testing in Dakar

Many physicians in Senegal and France, where most Senegalese sickle cell specialists are partially trained, assume that genetic testing that could imply selective abortion for people with sickle cell would run counter to the religious and cultural ethics of people…

West Africa Hub

2004

Diagnosing Diabetes, Diagnosing Colonialism: An Ethnography of the Classification and Counting of a Senegalese Metabolic Disease

This article explores the top-down production of the statistics frequently circulated in global health. These data must first originate in a place like the public hospital in Saint-Louis, Senegal, in doctor’s offices and laboratories and medical archives.

West Africa Hub

2021

Caregiving in Crisis: Fatherhood Refashioned by Sierra Leone’s Ebola Epidemic

In much of the literature on Sierra Leone, young men have been recognized for perpetrating violence or resisting authority. This characterization extended into the Ebola crisis, as young men were depicted as “resisting” public health measures. In contrast, little scholarship…

West Africa Hub

2020

Caregivers’ perception of risk for malaria, helminth infection and malaria-helminth co-infection among children living in urban and rural settings of Senegal: A qualitative study.

The parasites causing malaria, soil-transmitted helminthiasis and schistosomiasis frequently co-exist in children living in low-and middle-income countries, where existing vertical control programmes for the control of these diseases are not operating at optimal levels. This gap necessitates the development and…

West Africa Hub

2022

A History of Urban Planning and Infectious Diseases: Colonial Senegal in the Early Twentieth Century

This paper deals with the spatial implications of the French sanitary policies in early colonial urban Senegal. It focuses on the French politics of residential segregation following the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Dakar in 1914, and their precedents…

West Africa Hub

2011

Report

Sudan: Update on the humanitarian situation with a focus on the impact on healthcare

This thematic report provides an update on the impact of conflict on Sudan’s healthcare system using a secondary data review of public sources.

Central and East Africa Hub

ACAPS

2022

news

As conflict escalates in Sudan, three urgent health issues need addressing

19th April 2023

In this article, one of our SSHAP fellows from Sudan, Mariam Sharif, shares an update on the conflict and three ways in which the healthcare infrastructure has been compromised.

Central and East Africa Hub

Research paper

Knowledge and Perceptions on Menstrual Hygiene Management Among School-Going Adolescent Girls in South Sudan

This article draws on grounded theory and ethnographic fieldwork approaches and applies a political ecology of adolescent health (PEAH) framework to examine how school-going adolescent girls and their communities perceive sexual and reproductive health education (SRHE) and menstrual hygiene management…

Central and East Africa Hub

2021

Policy document

Plan Strategique National de Developpement des Services de Laboratoire de Sante 2021-25

The national strategic plan for developing health laboratory services, from 2021 to 2025, focusing in particular on: improving the delivery of laboratory services, supporting the different pillars of laboratory services, and strengthening governance.

Central and East Africa Hub

Republique Democratique Du Congo - Ministere De La Sante Publique, Hygiene Et Prevention

2020

Policy document

Loi cadre sur l’Organisation de la Santé Publique

The legal basis for public health action in DRC, grounded in the right to health guaranteed by the DRC constitution.

Central and East Africa Hub

Ministry of Health, South Sudan

2013

Policy document

Republic of South Sudan National Health Policy 2016-2026

Written by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of South Sudan, the National Health Policy 2016-2026 puts forth new paradigms for health service delivery, health financing, strategic information, leadership and governance, human resources for health, and access to essential…

Central and East Africa Hub

Ministry of Health, South Sudan

2016

Research paper

How Seasonality and Weather affect Perinatal Health: Comparing the Experiences of indigenous and Non-Indigenous Mothers in Kanungu District, Uganda

Maternal and newborn health disparities and impacts of climate change present grand challenges for global health equity, and there remain knowledge gaps on how these challenges intersect. This study examines how mothers are affected by seasonal and meteorological factors in…

Central and East Africa Hub

Elsevier

2017

Research paper

Moral distress among Ugandan nurses providing HIV care: A critical ethnography

The phenomenon of moral distress among nurses has been described in a variety of high-income countries and practice settings. No research has been reported that addresses moral distress in severely resource-challenged regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Through critical ethnography, this…

Central and East Africa Hub

Science Direct

2010

Research paper

Managing community engagement in research in Uganda: insights from practices in HIV/AIDS research

Community engagement (CE) in research is valuable for instrumental and intrinsic reasons. Despite existing guidance on how to ensure meaningful CE, much of what it takes to achieve this goal differs across settings. Considering the emerging trend towards mandating CE…

Central and East Africa Hub

BioMed Central

2022

Research paper

‘There Were Moments We Wished She Could Just Die’: The Highly Gendered Burden of Nodding Syndrome in Northern Uganda

Nodding Syndrome (NS) occurs within a wide spectrum of epilepsies seen in onchocerciasis endemic areas of sub-Saharan Africa. It has debilitating consequences on affected individuals and increases the socio-economic, physical and psychological burden on care-givers and their households, diminishing their…

Central and East Africa Hub

SAGE Publications

2022

Research paper

Whose voices matter? Using participatory, feminist and anthropological approaches to centre power and positionality in research on gender-based violence in emergencies

This article examines how applying participatory, feminist and anthropological methods in gender-based violence research can hold researchers accountable to both acknowledging and explicitly addressing power disparities.

Central and East Africa Hub

Global Public Health

2022

Research paper

The social dimensions of community delivery of intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy in Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy with is a key malaria prevention strategy. We conducted an anthropological study to understand the social context of a community based approach to delivering sulphadoxine pyrimethamine (C-IPTp) through community health workers (CHWs) in four countries…

Central and East Africa Hub

BMJ Global Health

2022

Research paper

Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) in the Republic of Congo: why the Congolese population is reluctant to screening?

Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) is a neglected tropical infection, and surveillance of the disease relies on community participation in screening. This study aimed to identify the main factors associated with low community uptake of HAT screening in endemic districts in…

Central and East Africa Hub

Pan African Medical Journal

2022

Research paper

The enduring consequences of conflict-related sexual violence: a qualitative study of women survivors in northern Uganda

One in three women in northern Uganda report having suffered from conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), including forced marriage and rape. Understanding women’s perceptions of and experiences with CRSV, especially related to the persistent health and social challenges they continue to…

Central and East Africa Hub

BioMed Central

2022

Research paper

Dramatic effects of COVID-19 public health measures and mass reverse migration on youth sexual and reproductive health in rural Uganda

Youth (aged 10 to 24 years) comprise nearly one-third of Uganda’s population and often face challenges accessing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, with a disproportionately high incidence of negative SRH outcomes. Responding to COVID-19, Uganda implemented strict public health…

Central and East Africa Hub

Oxford University Press

2022

Research paper

How social norms contribute to physical violence among ever-partnered women in Uganda: A qualitative study

This paper contributes to the literature that studies how social norms sustain undesirable behavior. It establishes how norms contribute to intimate partner physical violence against women. First, norms organize physical violence as a domestic and private matter. Second, they organize…

Central and East Africa Hub

Frontiers

2022