Black and non-Black women living with HIV/AIDS in São Paulo State: a study on their vulnerabilities.
Lopes, Fernanda
Abstract
Objective. Individual vulnerability is established in the context of intersubjective relations. In this sense, the present study sought to compare vulnerability to recurrent infections and illness among women living with HIV/AIDS. Methods. The study group was composed of 1068 volunteers, over 18 years of age (526 non-Black and 542 Black women) being attended by three public services, which are references for the treatment of STD/AIDS within the State of Sao Paulo during the period between September 1999 and February 2000. The women learned of the study by face-to-face contact with the reception staff in the waiting room and those who accepted to participate were asked to sign an informed consent form. The Institutional Ethics Committees of the participating centers approved the consent form and the study protocol. College-level female trained performed interviews in private rooms. Data collection instrument was a semi structured questionnaire that asked participant to express her experiences concerning different time points in her life, especially after she was diagnosed as HIV-infected. Statistical analysis was carried out using Pearson chi-squared test and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals were calculated using the exact maximum likelihood estimates. Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) log linear model was used to study the relationship between variables. EpiInfo version 6.04, SPSS version 8.0 and Answer Tree version 3.0 software were used. Results. The social conditions which most strongly affected the individual vulnerability of Black women were: difficulties with respect to access to formal education; less favorable living conditions; low individual and family per capita income; responsibility for the care of a greater number of people; problems with respect to diagnostic tests; difficulties with respect to access to information on anti-retroviral therapy for newborns and reducing damage with the use of injected drugs, difficulties in adopting protective behavior, such as the use of condoms, less possibilities of accompaniment by other physicians besides the gynecologist and the specialist in infectious diseases; less opportunities of receiving nutritional orientation; less facilities in obtaining other medicines besides the cocktail.The cognitive factors which contributed towards, increasing women’s vulnerability were: low degree of awareness as to the individual risk of infection and, consequently, the lack of initiative in looking for a health service which offers HIV testing, difficulties in comprehending the discourse of health professionals and in talking to the latter about their misgivings and their doubts, difficulties in comprehending the evolution of their clinical condition. The finding suggest that Black women living with HIV/AIDS were less aware of their condition and of how to deal with it, encountering, in the majority of cases, less possibilities of transforming their behavior. From a subjective point of view, the quality of counseling activities, the decrease in the quality of their sexual life after diagnosis and the difficulties they faced when discussing these issues with the physicians directly responsible for their care, such as the specialist in infectious diseases and the gynecologist, influenced the process whereby they became increasingly vulnerable. The non-Black women appeared to be more aware of the inadequate situations occurring in the health services. Conclusions. By incorporating race as an analytic category, it was possible to gain a better understanding of the multiple dimensions, the instability and the asymmetry of vulnerability. The experiences and impressions described by the women in this study point towards the necessity of recognizing differences and specificities when investing in institutional development, in policies and in programs geared towards professional training with emphasis on the humanization of care, on the improvement of the quality of communication and of interpersonal relationships and towards the management of issues which are inherent to relationships between “races” groups and between genders. Likewise, they underscore the need to broaden the repertoire of rights these women are aware of so they themselves may cooperate in the reduction of or in the process of overcoming their vulnerabilities.
Keywords
Health care, HIV/AIDS, Race, Vulnerability, Women
Avaiable at:
http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/6/6132/tde-10102006-144443/publico/FernandaTESE.pdf
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