The important concepts in the management of microbial keratitis

Eye practitioners in the Caribbean must be aware of the issues involved in the management of microbial keratitis. A comprehensive literature review is presented in order to outline appropriate management strategies and to identify when referral may be indicated. (AU)

Working women's sexual risk taking in Jamaica

Although the rates of HIV are increasing among female populations in developing countries, there is little information available about factors influencing sexual risk taking among working class women. This paper describes some of the issues discussed by two groups of 58 women working in Jamaica: Informal Commerical Importers and women working in the Free Zone. These women discuss their economic vulnerability, expectations about the role of men as provides, multiple partners, perception of children as resources and concern about physical abuse as factors that could influence decisions about condom use. The implications of these findings are discussed for their impact of intervention programs targeting working class women in Jamaica.(AU)

West Indian gender relations, family planning programs and fertility decline

Nearly all West Indian islands initiated marked fertility declines sometimes between 1960 and 1970. Family planning programs have not played an important role in these declines. Neither have other variables that conventional social theory tells us should promote reduced family sizes, like education and rising standards of living. The historical experience of Barbados and Antigua, which reached replacement-level fertility in the 1980s, suggest that West Indian fertility declines reflect structural changes in national economic that created job opportunities for women. Family planning programs need to be evaluated with reference to the distinctive health and human right goals other than fertility transition that they can effectively reach (AU)

Work, gender, and culture in the Jamaican community health aide programme

This dissertation explores the relationship among the organization of work in primary health care, the workplace culture of the Jamaican community health aides, and their domestic culture. Collected during twelve months of fieldwork in St. James parish in 1987 and 1988, the data include field notes from participant observation with community health aides, transcrips of tape recorded interviews with twenty aides, and information found in manuals and reports of the Ministry of Health and the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of the West Indies. National and international political and economic forces, the position of women in Jamaica, and contradictions in primary health care policy coverage in the Jamaican health service where they shape the organization of work in primary health care and give rise to the constraints and possibilities the community health aides find in their work. Fraught with conflicts and ambiguities, the organization of work in primary health care provides the space for, and necessitates, the workplace culture that emerges in the ideology and daily practices of the community health aides. With women predominating at every level in primary health care in Jamaica, domestic culture is a resource in the aides' response to the organization of their work and the workplace culture that emerges. Four features define the community health aides' workplace culture: 1) the aides'ability to construct an identity as mediators between the health service and the community from their marginal position in the hierarchial organization of primary health care; 2) the aides' ability to negotiate a compromise between the competing demands for staff in the health centers and community work, a compromise they turn to advantage in maintaining their claim to unique knowledge of their communities; 3) the aides' ability to cope, on the basis of their commitment to primary health care and their empathy with people, with material contradictions in their workplace; the permeability of the aides' workplace to their domestic culture which supports them in their struggle for control over their work and a better daily life while it enhances the delivery of primary health care. (AU)

English-Speaking Caribbean

An examination of the social and cultural dimensions of women's health status is particularly useful in the context of developing countries such as those of the English-speaking Caribbean. Despite the active and instrumental roles they have played in the growth of these societies, a historical background of slavery and indenture has bequeathed the majority of the Caribbean women an ambiguous legacy. On the one hand, a large proportion of them have had to maintain work roles equal to those of men; on the other hand, within the cultural sphere their status is inferior to men's (Intro)