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

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