Respiratory tract infections among male and female inmates: Experiences and management

• Main Author: Balibago, Mario Balanay
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2009
• Subjects: Respiratory infections; Respiratory tract infections; Public Health
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/3776; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/10614/viewcontent/CDTG004577_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study describes and compares the experiences and management of respiratory tract infections (RTI) among male and female inmates in Caloocan City Jail. This also describes the contributing factors to infections and how it affects the RTI experiences of inmates as well as to their management. Data gathering was done through in-depth interview with key informants. Data were grouped according to the themes and concepts and compared and analyzed for both male and female inmates. Result shows that male inmates are more prone to experience cough, influenza and asthma as well as tuberculosis and pneumonia as compared to female inmates. In addition, male inmates reported more symptoms and severe RTI than their female counterparts. Furthermore, male and female inmates vary in terms of their perception of RTI in general but both use their sense-based impressions as well as seek professional help to diagnose the kinds of infections and to assess the degree of severity of the infections. The factors that contribute to the experience of respiratory infections were inmates knowledge of RTI etiology, lifestyle practices, and length of inmates incarceration and jail conditions and were further reduced to the individual, institutional and environmental factors; the perceived cause of respiratory infections among inmates. These factors were found to have an effect to the experiences of respiratory infections among male inmates than female inmates. In general, these factors act in different ways: increase inmates exposure to infectious agents, decrease their resistance to infection or do both. In effect, these contribute to the differences in the RTI experiences between the male and female inmates as well as in the management of infections. In terms of managing RTI, male inmates approached more groups of persons than the female inmates. Furthermore, male inmates rely on their visitors while female inmates to their co-inmates. In addition, female inmates perceived to be given more help by the jail management as compared to the male inmates. To prevent infections and further re-infections, male and female inmates vary in their strategies like taking extra care and strengthening body resistance among male inmates; avoiding infected inmates and sharing of personal things among female inmates. It was found out that inmates have low knowledge about the biomedical etiology of RTI, and the jail in many ways contributes to the experience of RTI among inmates. The jail management should therefore find ways in minimizing the effect of these contributing factors and maximizing the opportunity of educating inmates about the nature of respiratory infections, its transmission as well as its management while they are inside jail.