Student Number 9705165A
Master of Arts in Forced Migration Studies
Faculty of Humanities / Objective: To identify and investigate barriers faced by Somali forced migrants when
accessing health care in Johannesburg. In particular, the study seeks to compare
perceptions of health personnel and migrants as to the nature of such access constraints.
Design and Methods: The study made use of semi-structured and in-depth interviews
with a snowball sample of health personnel and migrants. Ten health personnel were
interviewed and twenty migrants (ten male and ten female).
Results: Constraints of language and xenophobia were identified by both health
personnel and forced migrant interviewed. Constraints related to the shortage of
resources and the poor functioning of the referral system are experienced by all users of
the public health system, irrespective of their nationality. No mention was made of
traditional or allopathic medicine.
Conclusions: There exists a gap between the access to health care guaranteed in the
Refugees Act and practices at facility level. There are many similarities across interviews
in the constraints identified by migrants and some agreement in the constraints identified
by migrants and health personnel. These results confirm that migrants experience a fairly
severe level of constraint when attempting to utilize formal health care services in
Johannesburg.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/2112 |
| Date | 23 February 2007 |
| Creators | Pursell, Irene |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 523622 bytes, 50026 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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