Agencies and challenged stakes involving ARTs in Mozambique: Local and transnational aspects of access, provision and use

Journal title SALUTE E SOCIETÀ
Author/s Inês Faria
Publishing Year 2018 Issue 2018/2 Language English
Pages 14 P. 42-55 File size 76 KB
DOI 10.3280/SES2018-002004
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This article focuses on challenges in access to, and the provision of, biomedical infertility treatments and assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs) in Mozambique. Based on ethno-graphic research, it shows how quests for fertility at the ground level shed light on frictions stemming from global encounters (Tsing, 2004). The latter materialised in processes of re-productive travel and attempts to offer ARTs in Mozambique, on the particularities of local medicoscapes of fertility treatment provision and access (Hörbst and Wolf, 2014), and on the ways in which fluid and negotiated environments interact and intersect within Mozambican infertile couple’s therapeutic navigations (Vigh, 2009; Faria, 2016). The article is structured in seven parts. The first three parts consist of an introduction to the methods, local stakes on reproduction and infertility in southern Mozambique, and the healthcare provision contexts involved in the research. After such introduction, the following sections present cases regarding processes of ART provision and use encompassing Mozambique and South Africa. The cases support the article’s argument regarding the interinfluence between pragmatic agencies and local stakes in ART providers’ and users’ navigations within entangled local and global medicoscapes. The final section discusses the findings presented and draws some conclusions on local challenges affecting and stemming from ARTs provision and use.

Keywords: Infertility; Mozambique; South Africa; Assisted Reproductive Technologies; Therapeutic Navigations; Medicoscapes

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Inês Faria, Agencies and challenged stakes involving ARTs in Mozambique: Local and transnational aspects of access, provision and use in "SALUTE E SOCIETÀ" 2/2018, pp 42-55, DOI: 10.3280/SES2018-002004