IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2021i1p434-d715469.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Institutional Responses to Drought in a High HIV Prevalence Setting in Rural South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Kingsley S. Orievulu

    (Africa Health Research Institute, KwaZulu-Natal, Mtubatuba 3935, South Africa
    Department of Global Health and Infection, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9PX, UK
    Centre for Africa-China Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa)

  • Collins C. Iwuji

    (Africa Health Research Institute, KwaZulu-Natal, Mtubatuba 3935, South Africa
    Department of Global Health and Infection, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9PX, UK)

Abstract

In 2015, South Africa experienced one of the worst (El Niño-induced) droughts in 35 years. This affected economic activities, individual and community livelihoods and wellbeing especially in rural communities in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Drought’s direct and indirect impacts on public health require urgent institutional responses, especially in South Africa’s stride to eliminate HIV as a public health threat by 2030 in line with the UNAIDS goals. This paper draws on qualitative data from interviews and policy documents to discuss how the devastating effect of the 2015 drought experience in the rural Hlabisa sub-district of uMkhanyakude, a high HIV prevalence area, imposes an imperative for more proactive institutional responses to drought and other climate-related events capable of derailing progress made in South Africa’s HIV/AIDS response. We found that drought had a negative impact on individual and community livelihoods and made it more difficult for people living with HIV to consistently engage with care due to economic losses from deaths of livestock, crop failure, food insecurity, time spent in search of appropriate water sources and forced relocations. It also affected government institutions and their interventions. Interviewed participants’ reflections on drought-related challenges, especially those related to institutional and coordination challenges, showed that although current policy frameworks are robust, their implementation has been stalled due to complex reporting systems, and inadequate interdepartmental collaboration and information sharing. We thus argue that to address the gaps in the institutional responses, there is a need for more inclusive systems of drought-relief implementation, in which government departments, especially at the provincial and district levels, work with national institutions to better share data/information about drought-risks in order to improve preparedness and implementation of effective mitigation measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Kingsley S. Orievulu & Collins C. Iwuji, 2021. "Institutional Responses to Drought in a High HIV Prevalence Setting in Rural South Africa," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-11, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2021:i:1:p:434-:d:715469
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/1/434/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/1/434/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gemma Hayward & Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, 2021. "‘Seeing with Empty Eyes’: a systems approach to understand climate change and mental health in Bangladesh," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-30, March.
    2. Helen L. Berry & Thomas D. Waite & Keith B. G. Dear & Anthony G. Capon & Virginia Murray, 2018. "The case for systems thinking about climate change and mental health," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(4), pages 282-290, April.
    3. Marshall Burke & Erick Gong & Kelly Jones, 2015. "Income Shocks and HIV in Africa," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(585), pages 1157-1189, June.
    4. Holly Vins & Jesse Bell & Shubhayu Saha & Jeremy J. Hess, 2015. "The Mental Health Outcomes of Drought: A Systematic Review and Causal Process Diagram," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-25, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Vujcich & Meagan Roberts & Tyler Selway & Barbara Nattabi, 2023. "The Application of Systems Thinking to the Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmissible Infections among Adolescents and Adults: A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(9), pages 1-27, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lisa Woodland & Priyanjali Ratwatte & Revati Phalkey & Emma L. Gillingham, 2023. "Investigating the Health Impacts of Climate Change among People with Pre-Existing Mental Health Problems: A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(8), pages 1-33, April.
    2. Ivan C. Hanigan & Timothy B. Chaston, 2022. "Climate Change, Drought and Rural Suicide in New South Wales, Australia: Future Impact Scenario Projections to 2099," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-12, June.
    3. Sahar Daghagh Yazd & Sarah Ann Wheeler & Alec Zuo, 2019. "Key Risk Factors Affecting Farmers’ Mental Health: A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(23), pages 1-23, December.
    4. Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson & Anna Hoad & Mei L. Trueba, 2024. "‘My appetite and mind would go’: Inuit perceptions of (im)mobility and wellbeing loss under climate change across Inuit Nunangat in the Canadian Arctic," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-20, December.
    5. Linda Theron & Motlalepule Ruth Mampane & Liesel Ebersöhn & Angie Hart, 2020. "Youth Resilience to Drought: Learning from a Group of South African Adolescents," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-14, October.
    6. Annika Lindskog & Dick Durevall, 2021. "To educate a woman and to educate a man: Gender‐specific sexual behavior and human immunodeficiency virus responses to an education reform in Botswana," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 642-658, March.
    7. Flatø, Martin & Kotsadam, Andreas, 2014. "Droughts and Gender Bias in Infant Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa," Memorandum 02/2014, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    8. Mussa, Richard, 2017. "Long-term Effects of Early Life Maize Yield on Maize Productivity and Efficiency in Rural Malawi," MPRA Paper 75975, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Eastin, Joshua, 2018. "Climate change and gender equality in developing states," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 289-305.
    10. Yeongjin Gwon & Yuanyuan Ji & Jesse E. Bell & Azar M. Abadi & Jesse D. Berman & Austin Rau & Ronald D. Leeper & Jared Rennie, 2023. "The Association between Drought Exposure and Respiratory-Related Mortality in the United States from 2000 to 2018," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(12), pages 1-13, June.
    11. Jean-François Maystadt & Margherita Calderone & Liangzhi You, 2015. "Local warming and violent conflict in North and South Sudan," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 649-671.
    12. Kathleen Beegle & Michelle Poulin & Gil Shapira, 2015. "HIV Testing, Behavior Change, and the Transition to Adulthood in Malawi," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 665-684.
    13. Desbureaux, Sébastien & Rodella, Aude-Sophie, 2019. "Drought in the city: The economic impact of water scarcity in Latin American metropolitan areas," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 13-27.
    14. Wilson, Nicholas, 2012. "Economic booms and risky sexual behavior: Evidence from Zambian copper mining cities," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 797-812.
    15. Matthias Flückiger & Markus Ludwig & Ali Sina Önder, 2019. "Ebola and State Legitimacy," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(621), pages 2064-2089.
    16. Montira J. Pongsiri & Andrea M. Bassi, 2021. "A Systems Understanding Underpins Actions at the Climate and Health Nexus," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-15, March.
    17. Luke Chicoine & Emily Lyons & Alexia Sahue, 2021. "The impact of HIV/AIDS on human capital investment in Sub‐Saharan Africa: New evidence," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(6), pages 842-852, September.
    18. Flatø, Martin & Muttarak, Raya & Pelser, André, 2017. "Women, Weather, and Woes: The Triangular Dynamics of Female-Headed Households, Economic Vulnerability, and Climate Variability in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 41-62.
    19. Alan E. Stewart & Harrison E. Chapman & Jackson B. L. Davis, 2023. "Anxiety and Worry about Six Categories of Climate Change Impacts," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(1), pages 1-24, December.
    20. Lucia Corno & Nicole Hildebrandt & Alessandra Voena, 2016. "Weather Shocks, Age of Marriage and the Direction of Marriage Payments," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def040, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2021:i:1:p:434-:d:715469. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.