scholarly journals Applying Kabeer's Social Relations Approach to  Village Health Volunteers in Rural Papua New  Guinea

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ruth Heather
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Maternal Death ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Rural People ◽  
Health Infrastructure ◽  
Village Health Volunteers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Village Health

<p>In this thesis I explore the effectiveness and sustainability of the Village Health Volunteer system within the East Sepik Women and Children's Health Project (ESWCHP), Papua New Guinea. The ESWCHP is a well-established project that provides a health infrastructure for primary health care services in rural areas of the East Sepik Province. The ESWCHP supports Church Health Services, and village women who volunteer (Village Health Volunteers) to provide primary care in rural village settings. In 2006, I undertook research to assess the impact of the ESWCHP. The assessment showed that rural people were very supportive of the Project and that it had made a significant, positive difference to health in rural villages. There was however, an overwhelming response to the research from Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) with requests for a greater level of support from rural people and the ESWCHP (in terms of training, payment, and status) and greater consistency of medical supplies. In this qualitative thesis research, I revisited the 2006 data using a combined theoretical frame of gender and development, participatory development and Sen's capability approach. I developed a detailed method based on Kabeer's Social Relations Approach (1994) to guide the process of interpretation, analysis and representation of memories, notes, and data. Through the analysis of social relations, I examined questions concerning the effectiveness of the VHV system in the face of escalating maternal death rates and epidemic levels of HIV/AIDs, and its sustainability. The analysis showed that the ESWCHP was facing compounding gender inequalities that put sustainability of the VHV system at risk. The analysis also showed that on the basis of key health indicators, the ESWCHP health infrastructure with its current heavy reliance on VHVs was neither successful nor effective. Research is urgently needed to identify a sustainable and effective model of rural health care to address the rapidly escalating maternal death and HIV rates of rural people in PNG.</p>

scholarly journals Applying Kabeer's Social Relations Approach to  Village Health Volunteers in Rural Papua New  Guinea

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ruth Heather
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Maternal Death ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Rural People ◽  
Health Infrastructure ◽  
Village Health Volunteers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Village Health

<p>In this thesis I explore the effectiveness and sustainability of the Village Health Volunteer system within the East Sepik Women and Children's Health Project (ESWCHP), Papua New Guinea. The ESWCHP is a well-established project that provides a health infrastructure for primary health care services in rural areas of the East Sepik Province. The ESWCHP supports Church Health Services, and village women who volunteer (Village Health Volunteers) to provide primary care in rural village settings. In 2006, I undertook research to assess the impact of the ESWCHP. The assessment showed that rural people were very supportive of the Project and that it had made a significant, positive difference to health in rural villages. There was however, an overwhelming response to the research from Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) with requests for a greater level of support from rural people and the ESWCHP (in terms of training, payment, and status) and greater consistency of medical supplies. In this qualitative thesis research, I revisited the 2006 data using a combined theoretical frame of gender and development, participatory development and Sen's capability approach. I developed a detailed method based on Kabeer's Social Relations Approach (1994) to guide the process of interpretation, analysis and representation of memories, notes, and data. Through the analysis of social relations, I examined questions concerning the effectiveness of the VHV system in the face of escalating maternal death rates and epidemic levels of HIV/AIDs, and its sustainability. The analysis showed that the ESWCHP was facing compounding gender inequalities that put sustainability of the VHV system at risk. The analysis also showed that on the basis of key health indicators, the ESWCHP health infrastructure with its current heavy reliance on VHVs was neither successful nor effective. Research is urgently needed to identify a sustainable and effective model of rural health care to address the rapidly escalating maternal death and HIV rates of rural people in PNG.</p>

scholarly journals The Impact of a Filariasis Control Program on Lihir Island, Papua New Guinea

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. e1286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oriol Mitjà ◽  
Raymond Paru ◽  
Russell Hays ◽  
Lysaght Griffin ◽  
Nedley Laban ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Control Program ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals ET VILDNIS AF TABUER: Jagten på en kulinarisk struktur

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Liep
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Asymmetric Structure ◽  
Lactating Women ◽  
Food Taboos ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Clear Idea ◽  
The Universe

John Liep: A Wilderness of Taboos: The Quest for a Culinary Structure Recent anthropological research in Melanesia has focused on the construction of the person, theories of conception and procreation, and flows of substances through social relations and persons. There will often be a correspondence between substances such as sperm and biood, bodily parts such as bone and flesh, and contrasting foods that are gendered. An asymmetric constitution of the person and a clear structuration of food prestations between affinal sides may exist. A study of these themes on Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea yielded frustrating results. No clear idea of contrasting, gendered body aspects was found. Further, a large number of food taboos for menstruating, pregnant and lactating women was distributed in clusters that were amenable to various logics of interpretation without any total structural logic appearing. This negative result is explained by the absence of any sustained practice of asymmetric marriage and corresponding complementary prestations between affines, which would reproduce an ordering asymmetric structure of the person and of the universe of foods.

scholarly journals ‘Food is life’: Documenting the politics of food in Melanesia

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Ceridwen Spark
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Population Management ◽  
Creative Performance ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
West Papua ◽  
The Impact

In this article, I discuss two recent examples of women’s filmmaking in Melanesia. The documentaries are Tanah Mama (2014), focused on West Papua and Café Niugini (2015), set in Papua New Guinea. Both films explore and represent food in profoundly different ways. Here, I consider their respective depictions of food, demonstrating that Tanah Mama represents food as sustenance while Café Niugini renders food as ‘cuisine’ through the ‘creative performance’ of cookery. Nevertheless, and as I argue, both documentaries reflect the filmmakers’ interest in representing issues associated with food in the Pacific, including the importance of Indigenous access to land, population management, gender roles and the impact of changing cultural values on food consumption and health.

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