Table 2.
Devaluation and discrimination
| Discrimination stemming from the belief in contagion | |
|---|---|
| 1 | “…if someone come for help and they are wounded… When you help by trying to put herbs on the wound, you may touch and thereby get cancer.” (Soweto Traditional Healers’ group) |
| 2. | “The thing is that whenever you treat someone you must use hand gloves” (Soweto Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 3. | “People avoid people with cancer for fear of being infected” (Khayelitsha Church group) |
| 4. | “I think that would depend on how your family treats you, people will look at how you are being treated by your own family, if they treat you badly like giving you a different bed, blankets and dishes to use then the people from the outside will learn from that and treat you the same way” (Khayelitsha Church group). |
| Discrimination stemming from beliefs about sexuality and promiscuity | |
| 5. | “…If you get prostate gland cancer then you got [it] from immoral behavior…” (Soweto Political and Community Leaders’ group). |
| 6. | “People with cervical cancer are the ones that get discriminated against a lot because people associated it with sleeping around.... With cervical cancer it is like one has got what they deserved.” (Soweto NGO group) |
| 7. | “When I have cancer and my partner runs away, it can happen that he also has it, he may have contracted it from me.” (Khayelitsha Church group) |
| Discrimination stemming from beliefs in witchcraft | |
| 8. | “…It may be the neighbour that has bewitched the person and you will be giving them joy by letting them know that you have cancer” (Khayelitsha Church group). |
| Forms of Discrimination | |
| 9. | “I prefer to use myself as an example, if my partner was to be HIV positive which is similar to cancer, after years of being together it would be difficult for me to accept my partner.” (Khayelitsha Church group). |
| 10. | “They will stop calling you even if they used to call you, because they are worried thinking that you are going to be a burden to them.” (East London Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 11. | “People change even within the family as they do not want the responsibility of having to care for someone who is sick. Even children do not want to take care of their sick parents” (East London Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 12. | “She always complained that ever since people heard that she had cancer they did not come to her house.” (East London Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 13. | “I know one person whose husband left her because she had cancer” (Soweto Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 14. | “I know of someone who had cancer and stayed with a girlfriend who disappeared after hearing that he had cancer” (Soweto Traditional Healers’ group). |
| 15. | “It really hurts, to see somebody in that situation. People are leaving their families because of this thing.” (East London Church group) |
| 16. | “I think that a person with cancer is not treated well, we don’t treat them well, and we isolate him.” (East London Church group) |
| 17. | “I have an example of a neighbor who had children who ran away and did not want to support him when he was diagnosed with cancer.” (Soweto Church group). |
| 18. | “Once you have cancer, it’s like when you have AIDS people isolate you, and it eats you up…” (East London Political and Community Leaders’ group). |