A assistência das redes sociais ás pessoas vivendo com Hiv/Sida na Cidade De Maputo - Moçambique

Abstract

The problem of assistance to People Living with HIV / AIDS (PLWHA) in Southern Africa and, particularly in Mozambique, renews the interest in studying the role of social networks in providing support to its members in need. Studies carried out in this region point to the potential and weaknesses of such assistance. This finding guided the interest in the study of the inability of social networks to cover the needs of PLWHA in Mozambique, through an ethnographic case study in the City of Maputo, using participant observation, informal conversations and self-structured interviews with several participants in the research, between July and September 2005. The results suggest that PLWHA in Maputo City benefit from the assistance of social networks governed by ties of friendship, religious association, kinship and neighborhood, with networks based on kinship and religion ^ being the most active. However, the assistance that these two types of social networks provide to PLWHA is crossed by different limitations, associated with the type of assistance provided, financial difficulties, personal and family strategies and the history of social relations between members of social networks. Such results refer to the need to study the assistance that social networks provide to PLWHA in the context of historical dynamics of strategic social action and material possibilities, which condition the functioning, potentialities and weaknesses of social networks. (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)