LBGTQ Workshop+: Understanding the community and barriers to accessing healthcare in Mozambique
On July 20, 2023, a face-to-face workshop was held in the city of Maputo on the theme “Understanding the community and the barriers to accessing healthcare in Mozambique”. This workshop is part of the Alliance for Health activities, in a partnership with the LAMBDA Association, a member organization of the network, and the support of medicusmundi.
LGBTQ+ people “kill a lion every day to stay in society”
The workshop was designed within the context of inclusion and respect for sexual diversity and human rights, in addition to the need to better understand - within the Alliance for Health - the situation of the LGBTQ+ community in Mozambique.
A very thorough discussion and analysis took place, especially regarding concepts and terminologies related to sexual orientation, gender identity and sexual diversity. As well as on the LGBTQ+ people’s right to health and the barriers to equal access they face. In this sense, it was well worth bringing into this discussion the Intersectional Approach to Stigma and Discrimination, which allowed us to better understand the degrees of vulnerability of people and the community itself.
In general, the workshop showed that LGBTQ+ people “kill a lion every day to stay in society”, as well as having several challenges in accessing healthcare in Mozambique.
The main barriers have to do with:
1. The lack of training for providers to know how to deal with LGBTQ+ people;
2. Weak Privacy and Confidentiality in Health Units;
3. There are no instruments that capture realistic data about the LGBTQ+ community and that can influence the definition of public policies;
4. There is a lack of data on lesbian women, in terms of health, and therefore it is difficult to inform MISAU's actions. If we don't have data, we don't have policies for lesbian women;
5. The LGBTQ+ group also feels that the service is not humanized; in addition to harassment of lesbian women, especially in genecology consultations.
The intersectionality approach finally allowed us to realize that there are several dimensions of perception and analysis of the community's challenges: i. representational intersectionality – how people are represented in the dominant culture and societies through the media; ii. economic intersectionality – how wealth and resources are distributed in societies; individual or group access to information and the impact of social class on an individual's or group's access to resources, opportunities, etc.; and iii. institutional intersectionality – how institutions limit access to services; what laws restrict, limit, or deny people's access to resources and services.
Activity carried out under Agreement 2022/000398 “Improving the Quality, Coverage and Resilience of the Health System in Cabo Delgado” 2023-2026, funded by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID).
