Socio-structural barriers and older adults' therapeutic itineraries to access healthcare during the COVID- 19 pandemic in Peru

This PhD research will ask the critical question of whether the fact that older people represent 75% of
COVID-19 fatal victims worldwide is really primarily due to the nature of their bodies. Instead, I will
examine whether some of the reasons for the higher death rate among older people can be found in how
the healthcare system operates, their practices of discrimination against older people -also called
institutional ageism- and the overwhelming of health services during the pandemic. All that could have
limited or excluded older adults from getting treated or receiving appropriate healthcare. Additionally, I
will identify the strategies that older patients and their families had to develop to manage the disease
and deal with the lack of formal healthcare, a topic that has not yet been studied from a social science
and gerontological approach. This project will place this problem in Peru, a low and middle-income
country of South America with the world's highest COVID-19 death rate. In contrast to earlier studies, my
project will take a qualitative research approach to analyse this critical subject from the perspectives and
experiences of the key actors involved: healthcare providers, older patients and their families. In this
sense, this doctoral project -that would be the first of its kind in Latin America- wishes to obtain broader
lessons that could improve older people's access to healthcare provision in the post-pandemic recovery
period, as well as the wellbeing and right to life of older people in developing countries worldwide.