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ABSTRACT
Guangzhou is China's third most populous city, and the region's burgeoning manufacturing economy has attracted many young African businessmen and entrepreneurs to the city. The aims of this study were to examine strategies that African migrants in Guangzhou have adopted in response to health-care barriers, and explore their perceptions of how to address their needs. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews and two focus groups were conducted among African migrants residing in Guangzhou, China. Facing multiple barriers to care, African migrants have adopted a number of suboptimal and unsustainable approaches to access health care. These included: using their Chinese friends or partners as interpreters, self-medicating, using personal connections to medical doctors, and travelling to home countries or countries that offer English-speaking doctors for health care. Health-care providers and health organisations in Guangzhou have not yet acquired sufficient cultural competence to address the needs of African migrants residing in the city. Introducing linguistically and culturally competent health-care services in communities concentrated with African migrants may better serve the population. With the growing international migration to China, it is essential to develop sustainable approaches to improving health-care access for international migrants, particularly those who are marginalised.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Guangzhou African community leaders, Ojukwu Emma and Sultane Barry, for organising community events. The authors would also like to thank the African migrants in Guangzhou for their participation in this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Our use of the term African here is meant to include all citizens of countries on the African continent, most of whom are members of the African Union, or anybody who considers themselves to be of African origins. In so doing we do not claim cultural homogeneity across this group of people. Indeed, cultural differences, if any, between these nationalities indicated do not have any major implications in the way they are treated with regards to health-care delivery in China. In fact, Chinese, whether at the government level or at individual levels tend to treat and interact with Africans as a homogenous group, especially with regards to health-care (non)-delivery.