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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Fight your own Battle: Hospitalisation and livelihoods of cancer patients in Kenya
| Panel |
39. Livelihood, Vulnerability and Health. Moving beyond existing frameworks
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| Paper ID | 250 |
| Author(s) |
Mulemi, Benson A.
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | The incidence of cancer in developing countries is increasing and this amounts to half of the cases reported annually worldwide. These countries are underserved with therapies to save lives or interventions to improve the quality of life of cancer patients and their families. In Kenya there is inadequate access to effective curative and palliative care and due to the lack of resources for early detection; patients are presented for treatment at advanced stages. This paper draws on data from a twelve months hospital ethnography project in Kenya to describe the socioeconomic burden of prolonged treatment and hospitalisation due to cancer in already fragile household livelihoods. In a prospective qualitative study, informal focused conversations were carried out with forty two key and informants among the patients in the ward in order to understand the wider context of hospitalisation. Casual talk with other patients and their relatives provided more ethnographic data. Ten purposively selected patients were followed at home for observations and conversations for a maximum of three visits each and adult household members were asked to fill expenditure diaries for at least one month of hospitalisation and treatment during the fieldwork period. The entries were discussed during home visits, telephone conversations, and subsequent hospitalisations to minimise bias. As expected, cancer treatment depletes household livelihood resources and exhausts the social networks of support leaving the patients and their families virtually alone to fend for themselves. In the absence of adequate economic burden mitigation from formal or informal insurance schemes, cancer patients and their families are impoverished further by hospitalisation which patients perceive as the climax of trajectories of their misery and poverty. The paper explores ways in which patients and their families attempt to cope with the adversity engendered by hospitalisation due to cancer in spite of dwindling supports. The relevance of their coping mechanisms to understanding vulnerability and possible interventions to lessen vulnerability to future shocks is highlighted. This explorative paper is consistent with the need for more longitudinal case studies to provide insights for health and social policy measures to protect households from worsening poverty situations due to treatment of chronic illness in developing countries.
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