Treatment Isn't Free of Charge: Aging and Delays to Health Care Access in Rural Uganda

• In Event: 067 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 13. Health and Health Care Needs across the Life Course

Abstract

Despite the scourge of HIV and endemic poverty, the number and percentage of older persons on the African continent is growing. As with aging populations around the globe, with increased age comes increasing and varied burdens of disease and health care needs. Over the past two decades, many African health systems have expanded services to include voluntary testing and counseling for HIV and HIV treatment. There has been less focus on and expansion of geriatric care. This paper uses data from nine focus group discussions with persons aged 60-plus living in rural Uganda to understand their barriers to health care access, and the reasons that they delay health-seeking behavior. We use this information to adapt a well-articulated framework on delays to obstetric care in Africa. The three phases outlined by Thaddeus & Maine (1994) include delays related to (a) seeking care, (b) identifying and reaching medical facilities, and (c) receiving adequate and appropriate care. Older persons’ reports of why they delay seeking health care map onto these phases, with reasons and issues related to the realities of aging in a poor and rural environment. By categorizing older persons’ reported delays, we adapt and theorize the barriers to health seeking behavior among the aging African population. Understanding the delays provide insight into potential health interventions at the individual, community and health system levels that can address these delays and ultimately improve older persons’ health care access, health and wellbeing in rural Africa.

Authors

• Enid J. Schatz, University of Missouri

• Janet Seeley, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine/Uganda Virus Research Institute

• Joseph Mugisha, University of Missouri/Uganda Virus Research Institute

• Joel Negin, University of Sydney