Panel 12: Private Health Care in Sub-Saharan Africa: Between Constrained Accessibility and Enhancement of Health Care?

While the public health care sector in sub-Saharan Africa, its shortcomings and implications is increasingly examined, much less is known on private health care sector, although in the last decades public health services in many sub-Saharan African states have been partially overtaken by a flourishing private health sector (including informal and formal, as well as traditional and biomedical services). These processes were partially triggered through structural adjustment programs initiated in many countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary fund, but also through increasingly emerging middle classes in many countries. Given this background, this panel wants to examine the dynamics of the private health sector and its sometimes contrasting entanglements with prevalent ideologies and interests of international and transnational development engagement in health related fields and its implications for African populations. It invites papers that address (based on empirical research) one or several of the following questions:

Who gets access to the medical technologies and treatment possibilities that are offered increasingly by private clinics and practitioners? What kinds of vulnerability and inequality are (re-)produced here? How are they perceived and acted upon by health providers and clients? How is access negotiated between genders and generations and which tactics do individuals, families and larger social units (e.g., village associations, women’s groups) develop in this respect? How do governmental and non-governmental health institutions react to these challenges? Which new alliances and entanglements between the public and the private sector emerge in the process on local, transnational and international levels?