Women's work: volunteer AIDS care giving in northern Thailand

Because persons with AIDS in Thailand usually are cared for by their families, and because government AIDS policy relies upon this assistance for the care of the country's sick, the research reported here addressed the questions: Who are the home and community care givers for PWA? What kind of care do they give? And, What is the impact of care giving on the care giver(s)? Informants were drawn in 1998-99 from a long-term birth cohort study of a non-clinical urban population in the country's province of highest AIDS mortality, ChiangMai. The study was part of a larger, exploratory ethnographic study of the interplay among health, reproduction and development among persons born in 1964 and their mothers that I began in 1973. Findings include that among care-givers, parents, overwhelmingly mothers, and wives considered it their place, duty and moral benefit to care for adult children or husbands sick with AIDS.