Multimorbidity, or the co-occurrence of two or more long-term health conditions in one person, is seen as one of the greatest challenges to contemporary healthcare services. As the WHO explains: “the ageing population, less healthy lifestyles and an increasing incidence of chronic conditions mean that multimorbidity is on the rise. This trend is a major health care challenge facing all …
Tag Archives: Political economy of health care
‘Silicon health’ for Africa: Understanding the rise and impact of drone logistics
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, are on the rise. During the ongoing corona crisis their potential to either monitor curfews or to provide contactless deliveries is increasingly featured in various media outlets and discussed in policy circles.[1] A focus on health-related issues harkens back to earlier attempts to render drones – a military technology – productive …
Running on Borrowed Life
This article is part of the series: Chronic living
On a cold January afternoon in 2018, 18-year-old Sara locates me in the crowd at the train station. Together we take the bus to her home in a small village in rural Denmark. Sara tells me that she is excited to be training for her driver’s license. However, she is worried that her application for the license will be scrutinized …
Chronic living against all odds in Honduras
This article is part of the series: Chronic living
Yesenia was born with congenital heart disease in 2000, a time in Honduras when heart defects meant certain, if not sudden, death for most children. Owing to surgical advances dating back to the 1950s, most children in more resourced countries could by then be diagnosed and treated in a timely manner, significantly improving their chances of long-term survival. In Honduras, …
The ‘chronic’ lives of failing organs: afflictions of ambivalent care in Mexico
This article is part of the series: Chronic living
Life has always been difficult, Maria del Rosario told me, but she coped. That was before all the sickness. When her mother’s kidneys began to fail, she felt traumatised, utterly overwhelmed. No matter what she or anyone else did to help, it was no good. Their lives simply fell apart.[i]
Maria, a single mother of two, lived in Balcones …
African Immigrant Care Workers & COVID in the US: Their Fears, Protections, and Recalibrations
This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic
The US healthcare system depends on the labor of immigrant healthcare professionals, a fact mainly unrecognized and unreported during the pandemic. Twenty-eight percent of physicians are foreign-born, as are 22 percent of nursing assistants (Batalova 2020). The immigrant professionals make up even more of the workforce in healthcare positions that are undervalued, in comparison to what is considered skilled medical …