title: "We Smoke the Same Pipe": Religion and Community Home-Based Care for PLWH in Rural Swaziland.
abstract: We draw on a study of a church-run community home-based care organization in Swaziland to explore how individuals living with HIV perceived caregivers' impact on well-being. Our primary concern was to examine how religion, as a heuristic practice of Christian-based caregiving, was felt to be consequential in a direly underserved region. Part of a larger medical anthropological project, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 79 community home-based care clients, of whom half (53%) said they would have died, some from suicide, without its services. We utilized a critical phenomenological approach to interpret semantic and latent themes, and explicated these themes within a 'healthworld' framework. Participants were resolute that caregivers be Christian, less for ideological positioning than for perceived ontological sameness and ascribed traits: "telling the truth" about treatment, confidentiality, and an ethos of unconditional love that restored clients' desire to live and adhere to treatment. Findings are intended to help theorize phenomenological meanings of care, morality, health, and sickness, and to interrogate authoritative biomedically based rationalities that underwrite most HIV-related global health policy.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Sociology & Anthropology , Baruch College, City University of New York , New York , New York , USA.
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Root
authors.affiliation: b Department of Science of Religion and Missiology , University of Pretoria , Pretoria , South Africa.|c Shiselweni Home-based Care , Swaziland.
authors.forename: Arnau
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Van Wyngaard
authors.affiliation: d CIGI Chair in Global Health Policy , Balsillie School of International Affairs , Waterloo , Canada.
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Whiteside
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D002835:Christianity / Q000523:psychology*; D019058:Community Networks; D013541:Eswatini / Q000208:ethnology; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000208:ethnology / Q000628:therapy; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012424:Rural Population; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ART/ARV; Africa; HIV/AIDS; biomedicine; phenomenology