The hidden curriculum goes to the Orinoco delta

I am sat in the departures lounge of Maiqetia Domestic Airport in Caracas, awaiting a flight to a town on the edge of the Orinoco Delta called Maturin. 

My brief was to go "have fun". Seriously. 

My boss, Dr Mark Nelson, met one of my colleagues here, a while back at a conference on Margarita Island, and then in Peru, where they were were awed by his presentation. A doctor called Dr Arias approached him and mentioned that a local tribe called the Warao, who live in the delta, had an abnormally high prevalence of HIV, Hep B and Hep C triple infection. 

I just met Mara, one of my contacts here in Caracas, who has been instrumental in putting together this "SpR exchange" and apart from equipping me with the knowledge required to be safe and get by in Venezuela (this is no Magalluf), has also insisted that if I like drinking cervezas, I will have a great time. 

So why exactly am I here?

Well, since my days as a medical student, I've always wondered why clever doctors don't talk to clever anthropologists much. I met one of the cleverest, in my opinion, on elective and decided that culture and health are pretty much inseparable and that trying to improve health outcomes without an appreciation for the culture is simply futile in most cases. 

Many people know about Venezuela's recent past - Chavez's fiercely socialist stance and fiery relationship with their big neighbour the USA. It's oil wealth. Some know that Chavez's policies towards social inclusion and the health and welfare of minorities have been commendable, in my opinion. Fewer (myself included) know that this country has a national health service that is committed to providing free health care and at present can and does provide care for HIV, Hepatitis, Oncological illnesses and much more, that many other nations struggle with.

So the big questions is, when a country has the motivation and the resources to tackle some of this planet's most perplexing problems, why then are we not reaching those who need us? And more to the point, why are the better known more simple killers such as diarrhoeal illness and malaria, still killing scores of people here? 

I recently read a book called the 10 day MBA, which took me back to a presentation I gave when I was 18, talking about why certain religious/ethnic communities are in decline whilst others are flourishing. I remember I started my trying to define the problem and the question. Little did I know then that that was exactly what most MBAs teach when employing problem solving strategies. This is actually a very useful tool to use, when faced with any problem. 

So I asked myself, what is the question I am here to answer. The truth is, I don't quite know as yet. All I know is that on a google and medline search, there is very little data regarding the health of the Warao people. 

I have potentially only a few days in the field, its best to ask the people, or "stakeholders" what they think. Drawing on the health needs assessment my group performed as a part of our diploma in tropical medicine last year in Pangani, Tanzania, I've decided to conduct some semi-structured interviews asking the following: 

1) what do you perceive to be the main health problems here?
2) What do you perceive to be the solutions you need to these problems?
3) what do you perceive to be the barriers that exist at present to achieving solutions to these problems?

I think a cross-section of stakeholders including health providers and users would be ideal, as would various community leaders. 

I would then like to liaise with supervisor Dr Arias, here, in Maturin, and ask what the actual main health problems, solutions and barriers are, using data from his practice. 

I am sure this plan with evolve, but I think one thing to bear in mind is that whilst it may be very convenient to try and focus in on a perceived area such as "cultural barriers to health seeking behaviour" this may in fact be a distraction from the real issue, which may be that the tribe's ethnicity and culture may in fact have little impact on their risk factors for acquiring blood borne viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C. 

***

So lets go back to the problem solving methodology. I originally learnt it years ago as follows: 

1) What actually is the problem / question? 

- Is it really a problem?
- Can it be broken down? 

- Can we analyse the problem further? 

2) What are the possible solutions? 

3) Implement a solution 

4) Evaluate the solution - did it work? what have we learned from it 

5) is the problem still what we thought it was? 

***

So as I sit here in Caracas awaiting my flight to Maturin, I would like to hypothesise that the problem statement is simply: 

"Individuals in the Warao tribe have been noted to have triple infection with HIV, Hep B and Hep C."

I would then like to analyse it further

- what is the background rate of each infection in the country/region/ethnic group?

- does the ethnic group span national boundaries ?

- what do we estimate to be the uptake of testing and what is the undiagnosed burden?

- how are we investigating and are our tests appropriate?
- who are we reaching / not reaching eg due to linguistic and physical barriers (50% of Warao don't speak any Spanish) 

- is the distribution equal in all sexes / age groups / occupations / social groups 

and then to the interesting bits: 

If this phenomenon is real and significant, what are the potential causes: 

- cultural?

- behavioural?

- linked to economic / social / political factors (ie is it structural)?

[interesting point - read Paul Farmer's definition of "structural violence"]

My flight is about to depart, I shall return to this soon!

F