Clients and Providers in Ugandan ART Programmes

Info

Start date: 31 August, 2008 End date: 29 June, 2013 Project type: Smaller projects: PhD Project code: 90-08-KU Countries: Uganda Thematic areas: Health, Lead institution: University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Denmark Policy Brief: Policy Brief Project coordinator: Jenipher Twebaze Total grant: 1,125,092 DKK

Project summary

Project Completion Report:

The focus of the Ph.D. thesis is how the efforts to access and live with lifelong treatment made by people with different social and economic resources, are recognized, supported, and hindered by the various care programs distributing ART in Uganda. Confidentiality turned out to be one of the most important issues in the study, i.e. one of the things that clients in treatment programs were most concerned about. Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic treatment programs have been promising confidentiality for people who test for HIV while at the same time encouraging people to be open about the HIV status.  Though confidentiality is promised by the treatment programs, it is hardly ever practiced.  Lack of privacy and confidentiality in treatment centers is manifested in many ways in all treatment locations starting from the waiting area to exiting the treatment centre. While confidentiality is promised by treatment programs, then openness – or as it is often termed in the literature: disclosure – is encouraged to take place among clients and in particular in the family and community in which the clients live. Outside of the treatment center, however, as we shall see, people do manage to control information about their situation much more successfully than in the treatment center. In this thesis these contradictions and dilemmas of confidentiality are discussed. More generally speaking the thesis is about clients’ and providers’ attempts to control information in different se

Go back to all projects