TITLE:
A Support Programme for Caregivers of Children with Heart Disease in Rural Namibia
AUTHORS:
Kristofina Amakali, Louis F. Small
KEYWORDS:
Heart Disease, Home-Based Health Care, Coping, Interventions, Implementation, Evaluation, Outcomes
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.2 No.11,
November
24,
2014
ABSTRACT:
The majority of children suffering from
heart disease in Namibia receive treatment as outpatients, with their
caregivers taking responsibility for their continuing care. To provide the care
required by these children, the caregiver has to remain vigilant. Many of these
children live in rural areas and their caregivers may have only a limited
educational background, as well as limited financial resources, as they depend
on subsistence agriculture for a living. The development of the support
programme discussed in this article originated from the results of a
qualitative, exploratory, phenomenological study that addressed the issue of
how these caregivers managed this responsibility. The findings of this study
revealed that the caregivers generally had poor coping experiences.
Subsequently, these findings formed the basis for the proposal about a support
programme for the rural caregivers of children with heart disease in Namibia.
As part of the study, interventions for home-based health care were developed,
implemented and evaluated in order to facilitate the caregiver’s coping with
the demands of home care. The findings of an outcomes evaluation indicated
that the caregivers’ knowledge of the child’s condition, as well as the skills
for providing care at home and the information about community-based resources
that could provide them with support to cope, increased. If the programme were
to be extended to other families in similar contexts, the programme
interventions could make a difference in terms of their coping with the demands
of care. This paper describes the implementation process involved in a
home-based health care programme intervention of the study, and the subsequent
outcomes of the programme evaluation.