Paper short abstract:

This article analyzes the way HIV-positive women perceive the HIV/AIDS treatment program in the context of co-existence of physicians, traditional healers and Zion pastors. For these women, effectiveness means the combination of different therapeutic resources, available by various actors.

Paper long abstract:

This article analyzes the HIV-positive women's perception of HIV treatment program, in the context of co-existence of physicians, traditional healers and Zion pastors. Based on the ethnographic data gathered in Maluana, this research reveals that in their search for health care, the HIV-positive women combine treatments from various health care providers, in three different ways. While some combine Hospitals and traditional Healers, others combine Hospitals and Zion pastors, and others combine Hospitals, traditional Healers and Zion pastors. These combinations are motivated by the perception that in each provider women receive specific treatment for their afflictions. However, such therapeutic combinations are not random; they follow a logic conditioned by beliefs integrated in the HIV-positive women's values. And once these values are not statics, HIV-positive women make adjustments, generating changes in the therapeutic combinations they had made before.

Therefore, within efficacy models designed by international actors, emerges an alternative practice in which therapeutic efficacy is perceived holistically. This misunderstanding may be one of the causes of failure of health and development programs in multiple actors context.

Key words: health and development, HIV-positive women, therapeutic pathways and Health Care Providers.