Projects per year
Abstract
Sub-Saharan Africa carries a disproportionate burden of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Tobacco use amongst people living with HIV is higher than in the general population even though it increases the risk of life-threatening opportunistic infections including tuberculosis (TB). Research on tobacco use and cessation amongst people living with HIV in Africa is sparse and it is not clear what interventions might achieve lasting cessation. We carried out qualitative interviews in Uganda in 2019 with 12 current and 13 former tobacco users (19 men and 6 women) receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) in four contrasting locations. We also interviewed 13 HIV clinic staff. We found that tobacco use and cessation were tied into the wider moral framework of ART adherence, but that the therapeutic citizenship fashioned by ART regimes was experienced more as social control than empowerment. Patients were advised to stop using tobacco; those who did not concealed this from health workers, who associated both tobacco and alcohol use with ART adherence failure. Most of those who quit tobacco did so following the biographical disruption of serious TB rather than HIV diagnosis or ART treatment, but social support from family and friends was key to sustained cessation. We put forward a model of barriers and facilitators to smoking cessation and ART adherence based on engagement with either ‘reputation’ or ‘respectability’. Reputation involved pressure to enjoy tobacco with friends whereas family-oriented respectability demanded cessation, but those excluded by isolation or precarity escaped anxiety and depression by smoking and drinking with their peers.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 113759 |
Journal | Social Science & Medicine |
Volume | 273 |
Early online date | 17 Feb 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 17 Feb 2021 |
Bibliographical note
© 2021 The Author(s).Keywords
- : HIV, tobacco, Sub-Saharan Africa, smoking cessation, tuberculosis, biographical disruption, antiretroviral therapy adherence, masculinity
Projects
- 1 Finished
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Tobacco smoking among people living with HIV in Uganda: understanding the problem to inform effective interventions
Mdege, N. D., Thirlway, F., Ratschen, E., Siddiqi, K. & Msosa, A.
1/12/18 → 31/05/20
Project: Other project › Other internal award