“Volunteers Are Not Paid Because They Are Priceless”: Community Health Worker Capacities and Values in an AIDS Treatment Intervention in Urban Ethiopia
Language:
English
Series/Journal Title:
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Volume:
2014
Copyright:
2014
Pages:
19
Description:
This article analyzes community health workers’ (CHW) capacities for empathic service within an AIDS treatment program in Addis Ababa. I show how CHWs’ capacities to build relationships with stigmatized people, reconcile family disputes, and confront death draw on a constellation of values, desires, and emotions encouraged by CHWs’ families and religious teachings. I then examine the ways in which the capacities of CHWs were valued by the
institutions that deployed them. NGO and government officials recognized that empathic care was crucial to both saving and improving the quality of people’s lives.[from abstract]
Subject
Geographic Focus
Resource Type
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