Personal experience narratives 1
27 APRIL 2022
8pm to 9:30pm, Melbourne Australia AEST
11am to 12:30pm, London
12pm to 1:30pm, Johannesburg
Exploring COVID-19 experiential narratives in relation to HIV Citizenship: Challenges and Successes
Sanny Mulubale
Despite global progress on HIV testing, treatment and viral suppression, additional physical and mental health issues, and material inequalities, remain problematic for people with HIV. Covid-19 presents challenges for those not successfully treated or living with comorbidities, and may reduce HIV treatment, psychosocial, and other resources. These effects are likely to change people with HIV’s representations of their national, health and social citizenship. Such citizenship is a powerful resource within HIV and potentially Covid-19 pandemics. There are some important variations in Covid-19 prevalence, policy, and income among people. 20 semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted, extending 2019-2020 study on HIV and resource contexts with same participants, adopting a decolonial approach. Participants were evenly distributed across gender, locality - rural/ urban; aged 30-65 years; diagnosed 1-30 years; on ART. Questions addressed Covid-19 effects on resources for living with HIV, and Covid futures. A narrative thematic analysis was performed within and across the transcribed data. Participants described declines in ART availability and other HIV/medical treatment; increased economic hardship particularly around food; governance failure; reduced HIV-related psychosocial support; increased anxiety and depression; lack of Covid-19 and Covid-HIV knowledge. Protective factors were clinic access; salary/benefit stability; HIV NGOs’, phone/internet, religious, and family/friend support; and HIV-derived strategies for addressing Covid. Future possibilities included HIV competing with Covid demands; Covid endemicity and preparedness; economic depression; and opportunities for a more humane, environmentally aware world. Key propositions here are that HIV citizenship narratives were articulated around COVID – 19 and new treatment instabilities, reduced but still-important social networks, and increased present and future resource insecurities. This citizenship was mainly health-framed, addressed to clinical, NGO audiences and directed to government. In addition, participants framed themselves as offering pandemic understanding and future revisioning. The centrality of social and informational aspects of HIV citizenship indicates the importance of raising communications capital via phones and internet, while participants’ intensified economic, employment and food precarity suggests the value of resource-stabilising strategies, for pandemic-ready states.
Dr Sanny Mulubale is a graduate from the University of Sheffield, UK and University of Zambia. He also obtained a PhD as a Commonwealth scholar from University of East London (UEL) – UK. He is serving as the MIET Africa health coordinator in Zambia and is researcher and supervisor of post graduate students affiliated with a number of universities in Zambia, Zimbabwe and the UK. He ran the UEL Global Challenge Research Fund HIV research project in Zambia in 2018-2019. He also had two postdoctoral internships to coordinate and work with the UK HIV Psychosocial Network, for which he was nominated for a nOSCAR (the Wellbeing person of the year award from the Naz Project). Dr Mulubale has done collaborative research and community work with international organisations and local agencies such as UNESCO IICBA, UNICEF, International AIDS Society - in Geneva, KwaAfrica, British Academy/Leverhulme Grant, DFID, Public Health England, Ministry of General Education and Ministry of Justice in Zambia among others. He has keen interest in issues around identity, citizenship, global politics and the govermentalisation of health. His fascination is with the nexus between theory and empirical evidence in both research and policy frameworks. His research has appeared in both local and international journals.
Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on People with Disabilities in Nepal: An Overlooked Agenda
Obindra B. Chand
Health emergencies such as the influenza pandemic and COVID-19, adversely affect the access to essential health care delivery for people with disabilities (PwDs) throughout the world. Around 15 percent of the world's population lives with a disability. In Nepal, over half a million people have disabilities, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. As a result of COVID-19 like shocks and stressors have been disrupted the lives of PwDs in multiple ways. Several emerging evidences on COVID-19 and past pandemics demonstrate that PwDs are disproportionately affected during humanitarian disasters and pandemics. In addition to disability, other factors such as poverty, gender discrimination, and socially taboo subjects—sexuality can compound the problem. In addition to affecting their health and hygiene requirements adversely, it also affects negatively their mental health and psychosocial aspects, which rarely receive adequate attention from the authorities concerned. Because of the changed political environment, local governments are facing a greater crisis than the federal government. Consequently, PwDs are facing multiple burdens — struggling to access essential health care services; preventing themselves from infection by COVID-19, and enduring unequal mental health and psychosocial challenges. This has largely been neglected in the low and middle income countries during and after COVID-19, largely because of stigma, negligence, and lack of awareness about the wide range of disability-related needs of PwDs. Both internationally and nationally, many conventions and goals have been adopted to promote the access of PWDs to services. PwDs, however, live a different reality. Thus, this calls for an interdisciplinary perspective and intersectional approach for a better and more comprehensive understanding of diverse issues of disability.
Bio: Obindra B. Chand is a health and social science researcher working in the fields of medical anthropology, global health, disability studies, health systems research, and access to health care services and facilities for various vulnerable and marginalized groups. He is associated with HERD International. He has authored and co-authored several publications in his wider area of interests and engagements.