[Introduction]

Minimal resilience and insurgent conflict: qualitative analysis of the resilience process in six primary health centres in central Mali

BACKGROUND

In the context of universal health coverage in the Sahel, the study focuses on primary health centres and the difficulties of their implementation in the context of insurgency conflicts in central Mali.

METHODS

This is qualitative research through a multiple case study. We selected six health centres according to a reasoned choice to bring together contrasting situations. We conducted 96 semistructured interviews and consulted secondary quantitative data on attendance. By focusing on community health centres, the conceptual approach focuses on the process of resilience that unfolds in a dual context of chronic health system dysfunctions and armed conflict.

RESULTS

The resilience strategies deployed by health professionals were relatively basic and uncoordinated. In the end, it was the individuals who showed absorption. However, their room for manoeuvre was limited. In the most isolated health centres, resilience was based on subordinate, poorly trained staff, often from the locality. Degraded working conditions and fear caused a form of resignation among health workers.

CONCLUSION

The strategies and resources used showed a form of minimal resilience. This form is unfolding in a context marked by two structuring features. On the one hand, the Malian health system was relatively dysfunctional before the crisis, and on the other hand, the type of conflict was relatively low intensity that allowed health centres to remain open.

[Newborn care: International recommendations confronted with the social challenges surrounding birth]

INTRODUCTION

Driven by international programs specifically targeting neonatal survival, a set of recommended care practices is being promoted in West Africa. Using data from a multi-centered anthropological study, we enquire as to how local practices integrate the recommendations disseminated by these programs.

METHOD

The surveys were conducted in rural localities in five countries : Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Togo. In every site, the investigations combined ethnography of newborn care and in-depth interviews in maternity homes and homes.

RESULTS

The care of newborns is based on a set of local social representations and logics, where medical recommendations are integrated heterogeneously. In maternity wards, health professionals face difficulties in implementing recommended practices, and make various conciliations when faced with local material and social constraints. In private homes, the "messages" promoting life-saving care for newborns punctuate conversations, but lead to various interpretations and variations in care.

DISCUSSION

The irregular integration of medical recommendations in neonatal care is analyzed around three areas: the divergence of intentions around the birth, the dissonances between the recommended care and the local conceptions of the newborn, the influence of intra-family power relations. Considering the complexity of the changes in neonatal care, we argue for the implementation of programs that respect local cultures, and for health professionals to skillfully accommodate conflicting constraints.

[“If you don’t push, you’ll kill your child!” Midwives and mothers faced with perinatal death (Togo)]

INTRODUCTION

The latest global reports show that in 2016, 2.6 million children died worldwide during their first month of birth. Also, the proportion of neonatal deaths among the deaths of children under 5 increased between 1990 and 2015: from 26% in 1990 to 35% in 2015 [1].

METHOD

An anthropological study in public health and home-based structures in north Togo (Savanes region) allowed us to observe and perform a clinical ethnography of different perinatal death situations.

RESULTS

The nursing staff, consider the mother as responsible: She didn't come to the hospital early; she was ill but did not get treated or she was late for the expulsion leaving the newborn suffocating. The health care staff is rarely called into question in the face of such a situation. In addition to the guilt of grieving mothers, these tragic situations are in most cases erased as having never occurred by the nursing staff and also by the family: silence and many things left unsaid surround these deaths.

CONCLUSION

This study shows that we need to initiate death audits in the maternity wards in order to improve care for mothers and newborns.

[“Forgetting” the newborn: An anthropological analysis in Mauritania]

INTRODUCTION

In Mauritania, as in other West African countries, a series of actions has been taken to combat neonatal mortality. Considering the mixed success of these programs, we wondered how health workers are investing in neonatal care.

METHOD

An anthropological study was carried out in a locality in the Senegal River Valley. The surveys consisted of an ethnography of a health center, which resulted in detailed observations of care and interviews with health workers.

RESULTS

Our observations reveal that in the crucial minutes and hours following a normal birth, the attention of caregivers tends to turn away from the newborn. Recommended care such as keeping warm, examining and monitoring the newborn is not provided, while early breast-feeding occurs in a fluctuating manner. The newborn is quickly handed over to the family. Newborn care is thus "forgotten", both in the sequence of actions around childbirth and in the collective distribution of professional responsibilities.

DISCUSSION

Newborn care at birth remains poorly medicalized. We analyze the least involvement of health workers with newborns in two aspects : the perception of the uncertainty of neonatal survival, and the predominance of local childbearing. We are making proposals to put the spotlight back on the newborn in order to promote a better quality of neonatal care.

[Maternity care spaces – arrangement, use, and quality of newborn care in Cameroon]

INTRODUCTION

To supply high-quality neonatal care, it is essential to provide adequate infrastructures and material. Exceeding the visible simplicity of this condition, we suggest analyzing finely the relationship between the arrangement of the care spaces in maternity, their uses, and the quality of the care delivered to the newborns.

METHOD

An ethnographic investigation in ten hospitals of Cameroon, among which one by region chosen from the various levels of the sanitary pyramid, allowed us to examine how the arrangement of the sanitary spaces and the arrangement of the material could contribute to the vulnerability of the newborn in maternity wards. Two hundred observations of the care given at birth were transcribed, then used as support for interviews with healthcare professionals in the aims of explaining their actions.

RESULTS

The sanitary spaces, with habits and modes of organization, do not optimize the quality of the care to the newborns. The fragmentation of places used in the coverage of the newborn children engenders delays in care in case of complication at the birth. The ways in which the space and material are used in the wards reveal a lack of anticipation and coordination of care. The appropriations of places and arrangement of equipment are not favorable to recommended neonatal care practices, in particular concerning the fight against the hypothermia and the promotion of early breast-feeding. Indeed, the spatial organization in maternity wards appears to be more centered on the obstetrical care.

DISCUSSION

Reflecting on care spaces can provide a basis for local collective processes of improvement of newborn care practices. It allows to re-question the biomedical professional culture, the segmentation of the tasks and the techniques, and to durably anchor evolutions favorable to neonatal survival.