Experiências de pacientes com tuberculose no tratamento hospitalar durante a pandemia de Covid-19: um estudo no Centro de Saúde 1º de Maio, Maputo

Abstract

This study analyzed the experiences of tuberculosis patients in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic at the 1st of May Health Center in Maputo. The research, of an ethnographic nature, was based on semi-structured interviews, direct observation, and informal conversations, seeking to understand how patients experienced the treatment process in a context of restrictions on the functioning of health services and the alternatives they found to care for the disease.

Twelve patients were interviewed (8 women and 4 men), aged between 20 and 70 years, mostly residents of peripheral neighborhoods of the city of Maputo, with low levels of education and working in the informal sector. These socioeconomic conditions influenced how they faced the disease, the diagnosis, and adherence to treatment. The accounts reveal feelings of surprise, fear, and stigma after the diagnosis, difficulties in reconciling treatment with daily life, and adverse reactions to medication.

This work is relevant both socially and theoretically. From a social point of view, it helps to understand how patients face illness, cope with the limitations of health services, and resort to different forms of care, especially in times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic. From a theoretical point of view, it fits into the debate in the Anthropology of Health on medical pluralism, highlighting, based on authors such as Arthur Kleinman (1988) and Cecil Helman (2007), that patients circulate between various care systems, not exclusively, but complementarily, shaped by specific cultural contexts