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AIDS
Will Not Be Downfall of African Families
By Jennifer Faddis
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 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."
The study — "Caring and Contributing:
The Role of Older Women in Rural South African Multi-Generational
Households in the HIV/AIDS Era" — was published in the August
issue of the journal World Development. It was co-authored
by Catherine Ogunmefun of the University of Witwatersrand in South
Africa.
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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