Browsing by Author "van Ryneveld, Manya"

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    Every loaf of bread is political – reflections on collective care responses to covid-19 in cape town
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2024) van Ryneveld, Manya; Schneider, Helen; Brady, Leanne
    Feminist perspectives on care have demonstrated how capitalism undervalues care work. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted this further, as systems of production and social reproduction became destabilized globally. In many countries, the formal pandemic response fell short of attending to the daily, fundamental care needs of people living through the crisis, especially those compromised by the socio-economic effects of the pandemic. These needs were often attended to at the community level. This article explores a community-led network of care, known as CANs, that emerged in response to the pandemic in Cape Town. It makes three overarching observations. The first is that community-led responses were characterised by a push towards the collectivisation of care work. The second is that this enabled emergent strategies and relational practices of care, centring notions of solidarity, inter-dependence and horizontal exchange of resources and knowledge. Finally, we observed that, although the devaluation of care work limited the recognition and material support extended to CANs, opportunities to re-politicise care work as resistance work emerged. These represent a prefigurative moment in which alternative logics and strategies can transform the vision of our health and care systems, and the notion of community participation in and ownership of those systems.
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    Looking back to look forward: a review of human resources for health governance in South Africa from 1994 to 2018
    (Springer Nature, 2020) van Ryneveld, Manya; Schneider, Helen; Lehmann, Uta
    While South Africa has had a fairly consistent record of producing national-level strategic plans for human resources for health in the past 25 years, the country continues to face major problems of affordability, availability, distribution and management of its health workforce. There are several factors contributing to the state of health human resources in the country, but problems with governance stand out as one area requiring further research, analysis and critique. This paper presents a retrospective analysis of the historical patterns in national health human resources governance in South Africa, based on a desktop policy review spanning 25 years after democracy. The authors took a multi-pronged, iterative approach, reviewing policy documents alongside grey and published literature. This led to a timeline showing key legislation, relevant health system and human resource policies, interventions, reviews and evaluations from 1994 to 2018. The review identified three distinct periods that help to characterise the terrain of human resources for health governance over the concerned 25 years. Firstly, a foundational period, in which much of the constitutional and legislative groundwork was laid. Secondly, the HIV epidemic period, which presented a major disruption to the development of system wide governance interventions and improvements.
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    Mothers' experiences of exclusive breastfeeding in a postdischarge home setting
    (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020) van Ryneveld, Manya; Mwangome, Martha K; Kahindi, Jane
    Malnutrition contributes to direct and indirect causes of maternal mortality, which is particularly high in Afghanistan. Women's nutritional status before, during, and after pregnancy affects their own well‐being and mortality risk and their children's health outcomes. Though maternal nutrition interventions have documented positive impact on select child health outcomes, there are limited data regarding the effects of maternal nutrition interventions on maternal health outcomes globally.
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    What is Covid-19 teaching us about community health systems? A reflection from a rapid community-led mutual aid response in Cape Town, South Africa
    (Kerman University of Medical Sciences, 2022) van Ryneveld, Manya; Whyle, Eleanor; Brady, Leanne
    The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed the wide gaps in South Africa’s formal social safety net, with the country’s high levels of inequality, unemployment and poor public infrastructure combining to produce devastating consequences for a vast majority in the country living through lockdown. In Cape Town, a movement of selforganising, neighbourhood-level community action networks (CANs) has contributed significantly to the communitybased response to COVID-19 and the ensuing epidemiological and social challenges it has wrought. This article describes and explains the organising principles that inform this community response, with the view to reflect on the possibilities and limits of such movements as they interface with the state and its top-down ways of working, often producing contradictions and complexities. This presents an opportunity for recognising and understanding the power of informal networks and collective action in community health systems in times of unprecedented crisis, and brings into focus the importance of finding ways to engage with the state and its formal health system response that do not jeopardise this potential.
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    What is Covid-19 teaching us about community health systems? A reflection from a rapid community-led mutual aid response in cape town, South Africa
    (Kerman University of Medical Sciences, 2020) van Ryneveld, Manya; Whyle, Eleanor; Brady, Leanne
    The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed the wide gaps in South Africa’s formal social safety net, with the country’s high levels of inequality, unemployment and poor public infrastructure combining to produce devastating consequences for a vast majority in the country living through lockdown. In Cape Town, a movement of selforganising, neighbourhood-level community action networks (CANs) has contributed significantly to the communitybased response to COVID-19 and the ensuing epidemiological and social challenges it has wrought. This article describes and explains the organising principles that inform this community response, with the view to reflect on the possibilities and limits of such movements as they interface with the state and its top-down ways of working, often producing contradictions and complexities. This presents an opportunity for recognising and understanding the power of informal networks and collective action in community health systems in times of unprecedented crisis, and brings into focus the importance of finding ways to engage with the state and its formal health system response that do not jeopardise this potential.