Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. Supplement

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Over the last 10-15 years, poor African households have had to cope with the burden of increased levels of chronic illness such as HIV/AIDS. How do these households cope with the cost burdens of ill health and healthcare, and has this burden further impoverished them? What policy responses might better support these households? This is a report from the field of the South African Costs and Coping study (SACOCO) - a longitudinal investigation of household experiences in the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance site...

Much social science research on HIV/AIDS focuses on its impact within affected communities and how people try to cope with its consequences. Based on fieldwork in rural South Africa, this article shows ways in which the inhabitants of a village react to illness, in general, and the role their reactions play in facilitating the spread of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS. There is potentially a strong connection between the manner in which people respond to illness in general, and actual transmission of infection...

UNLABELLED: There is currently a lack of research on the association between demographic dynamics and household use of natural resources in rural Africa. Such work is important because in rural Africa natural resources buffer households against shocks, offering both sustenance and income-generating potential. AIMS: The article focuses on adult mortality as a household shock, examining use of local environmental resources as related to household dietary needs. METHODS: The authors analyze two sources of data collected during May-December 2004 in the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) in rural South Africa...

AIMS: To quantify the impact of the South African old age (social) pension on outcomes for pensioners and the prime-aged adults and children who live with them, and to examine alternative means by which pensions affect household outcomes. METHODS: We collected socioeconomic data on 290 households in the Agincourt demographic surveillance area (DSA), stratifying our sample on the presence of a household member age-eligible for the old-age pension (women aged 60 and older, men aged 65 and older)...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

AIM: This paper examines financial, emotional, and physical responsibilities elderly women are being asked to take on due to the incapacity of their adult children to care for the next generation; such incapacity is likely to increase as the HIV/AIDS epidemic worsens. METHODS: This paper combines quantitative and qualitative data. Census data from the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance system (AHDSS) describe the presence of the elderly (specifically women over the age of 60 and men over the age of 65) in households in the Agincourt study site...

AIMS: To examine how a rural community profoundly affected by escalating rates of largely AIDS-related deaths of young and middle-aged people makes sense of this phenomenon and its impact on their everyday lives. METHODS: Data were collected in Agincourt subdistrict, Limpopo Province. Twelve focus groups were constituted according to age and gender and met three times (a total of 36 focus-group discussions [FGDs]). The FGDs explored sequentially people's expectations of their lives in the "new" South Africa, their interpretations of the acceleration of death amongst the young and middle-aged, and their understandings of HIV/AIDS...

AIMS: To investigate changes in household structure in rural South Africa over the period 1996-2003, a period marked by politico-structural change and an escalating HIV/AIDS epidemic. In particular, the authors examine whether there is dissolution of extended family living arrangements. METHODS: Data from the Agincourt demographic surveillance system, in rural north-eastern South Africa, and the rural sub-samples of selected nationally representative data sets were used to compare changes in the cross-sectional distribution of household types...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: In April 1998, the South African government introduced the child-support grant as a poverty-alleviation measure to support the income of poor households and enable them to care for the child. AIMS: This research aimed to measure equity of access to applications for the child-support grant in an area characterized by poverty. Three questions were addressed: (i) How does socioeconomic status affect the probability of a household applying for a child-care grant? (ii) What household and caregiver characteristics are associated with child-care-grant application? (iii) What barriers to access are experienced by households that do not apply for the child-care grant? METHODS: The study population of 6,725 households with at least one age-eligible child was drawn from the Agincourt field site, a rural sub-district of South Africa...

AIM: To investigate the relationship between children's nutritional status and a series of measures capturing both the current status and the lifetime history of their connection with adult caregivers in the Agincourt sub-district of rural South Africa. METHODS: Using data on a sample of 202 children from a recent ethnographic study of children's social connections and well-being, the authors (1) compare height for age and weight for age to an accepted international standard and (2) conduct bivariate analyses of the relationships between selected measures of social connection and extreme deviations below expected weight and expected height...

AIM: To identify risk factors for severe childhood malnutrition in a rural South African district with a high HIV/AIDS prevalence. DESIGN: Case-control study. SETTING: Bushbuckridge District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. PARTICIPANTS: 100 children with severe malnutrition (marasmus, kwashiorkor, and marasmic kwashiorkor) were compared with 200 better nourished (>-2 SD weight-for-age) controls, matched by age and village of residence...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

AIM: To describe household change over a 10-year period of tremendous social, political, economic and health transformation in South Africa using data from the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance system in the rural northeast of South Africa. METHODS: Examination of household structure and composition at three points: 1992, 1997, and 2003. These three years loosely represent conditions immediately before the elections (1992), short term post-elections (1997), and longer term (2003), and span a period of notable increase in HIV prevalence...

BACKGROUND: World population growth will be increasingly concentrated in the urban areas of the developing world; however, some scholars caution against the oversimplification of African urbanization noting that there may be "counter-urbanization" and a prevailing pattern of circular rural-urban migration. The aim of the paper is to examine the ongoing urban transition in South Africa in the post-apartheid period, and to consider the health and social policy implications of prevailing migration patterns...

AIMS: To analyse trends in fertility rates and net reproduction rates in Agincourt, a rural area of South Africa located in the former homeland of Gazankulu near the Mozambican border. Trends are analysed in the context of widely available modern contraceptive methods and increasing HIV/AIDS. METHODS: A health and demographic surveillance system has been in place since 1992, covering a population of approximately 70,000 persons, with an annual census update and comprehensive recording of births and deaths...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

AIMS: Genetic variation at the apolipoprotein E (apoE) locus is an important determinant of plasma lipids. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the association between apolipoprotein E genotype and plasma lipid levels among a rural black population in South Africa. METHODS: Lipid levels and apoE genotypes were studied in 505 volunteer subjects (363 women, 142 men) resident in the Dikgale demographic surveillance site. RESULTS: Allele frequencies were found to be 0...