This Is All Koosa: Health-Seeking For Children In A Cairo Slum

The aim of this paper, presented at Oxford's Health, Illness and Disease Conferenced held from 3-5 2009 July is to present the findings of an ongoing research project conducted in the Cairene slum of Ain Es-Sira. It examines the effects of financial capacity and conceptions of citizenship on the health-seeking behaviour of mothers for their children. Ain Es-Sira, a slum neighbourhood of approximately 6,000 inhabitants, has been selected to benefit from a pilot study of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme. Implemented in dozens of countries across the world, CCT programmes give families living below the poverty line cash and, in exchange, require that families fulfill certain conditions, which are assumed to facilitate the breakdown of the intergenerational transfer of poverty. In addition to the core conditions pertaining to child education (school attendance until 15 years of age) and health (regular preventive checkups), the Egyptian pilot considers beneficiary families not as aid recipients, but as partners in the development process. Thus, the pilot will encourage and measure progress in families’ community participation, women’s empowerment, intra-familial relationships, and the effects of the beneficiaries’ citizenship engagement vis-à-vis government-provided public services.