Abstract : Editor's note: The survey analysed below by Nathalie Béchu was part of a larger study of 600 households in Burundi and Haiti as well as Côte d'Ivoire. Households were selected into the sample after being identified by one of three index health facilities as containing an adult with AIDS. At least one adult in the survey households was ill with AIDS and had charge of one or more children. The objective was to analyse the changes in the living conditions of these households as the illness progressed and when the ill person died.
From among the 200 households studied in Côte d'Ivoire, 120 were followed over a period of 20 months, and 107 households were followed through to the end of the study period. So the data below derive from 107 households. Beginning seven and a half months after they were first recruited, the households were interviewed six times at two- month intervals.
Household size varied from two to 16 people, with an average of 6.3 people (though the average dropped from 6.6 to 5.9 from beginning to end of the project). Eighty- seven households were in urban areas and 20 in semi-rural, and 62 of those who were ill were men; 45, women. Eighty-three of those who were ill were still living by the end of the survey period, and 24 had died.
The survey was part of a research programme coordinated by the Centre International d'Enfance and cofinanced by the Agence Nationale de Recherche sur le SIDAand the French Ministry of Cooperation and Develop-ment. ORSTROM and the University of Côte d'Ivoire collaborated in the study. This edited extract is from the full paper