AIDS not the downfall of African families

The media’s message is clear: the AIDS epidemic will be the downfall of families in Africa. A new study by a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher calls that an overstatement. Her study shows that AIDS compounds the issue of poverty in households where poverty is already a prevailing issue, especially when a household loses its primary income earner to AIDS.

“We saw some households that had experienced an AIDS death functioning better than some households that had not experienced an AIDS death,” said Enid Schatz, assistant professor of occupational therapy and director of social science research in the MU School of Health Professions. “We were surprised to see that all the alarmist predictions in the popular media that AIDS will bring an imminent downfall to the African society just did not seem to be true. In fact, because of all the poverty issues, AIDS just seems to be viewed as ‘just another crisis’ to the families in South Africa.”

Schatz spent time with older women in multi-generational households in a rural part of northeast South Africa. The older generation’s government pensions (one of few developing countries to offer this type of assistance) play a crucial role in day-to-day survival in this area where AIDS morbidity and mortality have profound effects on household resources. The study says the elderly are much more likely to be affected, rather than infected, with HIV/AIDS.

“Some of the older women did express that their situations seemed difficult and they expected to be spending these years of their lives resting. However, most often we heard that they feel it is their obligation and responsibility to carry the household financially with their pensions and despite the hardships, most are able to cope,” Schatz said.

Often, the offspring of the elderly in families either die of AIDS or have to migrate to find work because of the high unemployment rate in the rural areas. The households are then left to cope with the loss of income and support previously provided by those who become sick or die of AIDS. If parents migrate to find work, grandmothers must use their pensions, intended to sustain one elderly individual, to maintain an entire household and often even donate to other households. One elderly woman in the study and her husband support 12 people, including seven grandchildren, four of whom are AIDS orphans.

“In the Western perspective we often see households as being unconnected and that is not the case in South Africa,” Schatz said. “We saw families who were very resilient and really taking care of each other. In some cases, grandmothers were caring for their own grandchildren as well as orphans and caring for those sick and dying of AIDS.”

Source: University of Missouri-Columbia

Related stories:

Mass vaccination unnecessary in the event of a large bioterrorist US smallpox attack
Mass vaccination would not be necessary in the event of a large-scale smallpox bioterrorist attack in the United States, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that appears online in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Researchers urge integrating TB into HIV care
In resource-limited settings where tuberculosis is a major cause of mortality among HIV patients and where a multidrug-resistant TB epidemic is emerging, researchers are pressing for approaches to integrate TB prevention and treatment into HIV care and treatment.
Food insecurity linked with HIV/AIDS in Africa
Determining how the HIV/AIDS epidemic increases food insecurity in African cities – and what can be done to reduce the chances of this happening –is the focus of a new, international Queen’s-led project.
Scandal of invisibility plagues countries with no civil registries
Most people in Africa and Asia are born and die without leaving a trace in any official records, giving policymakers and researchers little information on which to base public health decisions, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher and colleagues say in a paper published today (Oct. 29, 2007) in the British medical journal The Lancet.
Ability to listen to 2 things at once is largely inherited, says twin study
Your ability to listen to a phone message in one ear while a friend is talking into your other ear—and comprehend what both are saying—is an important communication skill that’s heavily influenced by your genes, say researchers of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health. The finding, published in the August 2007 issue of Human Genetics, may help researchers better understand a broad and complex group of disorders—called auditory processing disorders (APDs)—in which individuals with otherwise normal hearing ability have trouble making sense of the sounds around them.
Making 'Pavlov's Cockroach'
In an experiment that made him a household name, the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov a century ago got dogs used to hearing a bell every time they were fed. The dogs soon started drooling whenever they heard the bell.
18th annual World Aids Day is observed
The 18th annual World Aids Day was observed Thursday around the theme "Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise."
Author interview: Podcasting biz (Update)
The growing popularity of the Internet-based broadcast medium known as podcasting is finding its way into businesses that are looking for new methods to reach consumers.

News discussion:

Medicine & Health news