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Accepted Paper:
Juggling with the norms: everyday practice in an emergency service in Niger
Eric Hahonou
(Roskilde University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the daily functioning of the emergency service of the Hospital of Niamey (Niger). It describes how patients and health practitioners deal with social, official and practical norms.
Paper long abstract:
Corruption in health services is one of the many ways by which actors break the official rules that are meant to frame the daily management of health services in Africa and elsewhere. This paper looks at the daily functioning of the emergency service of the Hospital of Niamey (Niger). In acute conditions, the life of the patient does not only depend on the quality and efficiency of the services provided by the medical staff but it depends as well on the qualifications of the persons accompanying the patient and more especially on the capacity of the patient's attendant to read the pragmatic norms that rule the service. The chronic lack of materials and equipment combined with uncertainties on salaries result in systemic petty corruption. By looking at the discourses deployed by health actors to justify their practices or denounced those of the others, the author explains how medical staff deal with official norms, social norms and practical norms between illegality and illegitimacy. Although the hospital of Niamey is officially a non-profit institution owned by the state, the daily appropriation of the hospital by the staff turns it into a profit-oriented service that produces and furthers social inequalities.
Acting in the name of the state: practices, practical norms and the law in books
Session 1