Handicapés visuels et accès aux soins ophtalmologiques dans la ville de Yaoundé : une approche sociologique

Abstract

The sociology dissertation entitled "Visual disabilities and access to care ophthalmologists in the city of Yaoundé: a sociological approach” develops the observation that: the principles of the standards protecting and promoting the health of the disabled (visually impaired), are out of phase with the realities on the ground. Indeed, patients benefit from ophthalmological care crossed by informational, communicational and economic obstacles, which makes it difficult to access health care. Therefore, this research aims to understand the social origin of these obstacles. It is this problem that justifies the following main research question: How explain the difficult access to eye care for the visually impaired in Yaoundé? This questioning finds an answer through the following main hypothesis: the difficulties of access to ophthalmological care are elucidated from an inter-ignorance of the mechanisms of care by the patients and the administration, phenomenon that generates social consequences. To address this issue, we have made use of a methodology that mobilizes among other things, the theoretical field. This field deploys three theories namely: the social construction of reality, the current of ethnomethodology, and social stigma. Its heuristic contribution was to build a frame of reference for the analysis of the subject. The operationally of the theoretical field made use of qualitative methods of data collection in occurrence: documentary observation, direct observation, interview or case study. These information-gathering techniques have yielded more meaningful explanations of access to eye care. The research focused on the visually impaired and the "normal" involved in the management of this disability. We mobilized a probability sample of thirty-four respondents. The use of the sub-categories of interviewees that are patients, caregivers, and administrative agents required the choice of stratified sampling. These categories of actors were systematically matched from a list of stakeholders. Substantially, from this research, four results are retained. The first reveals that the State and its partners take care of the visually impaired. This assistance is normative, technical, material, even if the patients very often dispute the support of the State. The representations of the disabled explain the visual handicap by clinical, natural or traditional arguments. Secondly, the major obstacle linked to the difficult access to ophthalmological health is constituted around the inter-ignorance shared by health managers and the visually impaired in the sense that there is not always a common framework for knowledge facilitating communication tests between these actors. This assumption generates informational and economic obstacles for the disabled. The third result demonstrates that the mixed views that normal and visually impaired people have of blindness affect rehabilitation. Social cohesion is a determining factor in care, but not all normal have yet understood the fact that disability is a social pathology. As for the fourth result, unfavorable care leads to psycho-social effects in patients. In this case, there is a language mechanism that provides the feeling of stigmatization in visually impaired people. However, the actors are driven by reconstructive opinions of access to health by advocating modern care. These expressions of respondents turn away from the fundamental question, namely: the control of the mechanisms of care. The city remains a reference for access to health, only that patients are not all informed of rational approaches to specific care. This work opens a perspective on “staged” visual impairment.