Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic
by Julie Livingston
ISBN
9780822353423
Description
In Improvising Medicine, Julie Livingston tells the story of Botswana's only dedicated cancer ward, located in its capital city of Gaborone. This affecting ethnography follows patients, their relatives, and ward staff as...In Improvising Medicine, Julie Livingston tells the story of Botswana's only dedicated cancer ward, located in its capital city of Gaborone. This affecting ethnography follows patients, their relatives, and ward staff as a cancer epidemic emerged in Botswana. The epidemic is part of an ongoing surge in cancers across the global south; the stories of Botswana's oncology ward dramatize the human stakes and intellectual and institutional challenges of an epidemic that will shape the future of global health. They convey the contingencies of high-tech medicine in a hospital where vital machines are often broken, drugs go in and out of stock, and bed-space is always at a premium. They also reveal cancer as something that happens between people. Serious illness, care, pain, disfigurement, and even death emerge as deeply social experiences. Livingston describes the cancer ward in terms of the bureaucracy, vulnerability, power, biomedical science, mortality, and hope that shape contemporary experience in southern Africa. Her ethnography is a profound reflection on the social orchestration of hope and futility in an African hospital, the politics and economics of healthcare in Africa, and palliation and disfigurement across the global south.
Related Tags
#history#nonfiction#education#pastanpresent
Share
Be the first to add this book to your shelf
Find a copy of Improvising Medicine: An African Oncolog
Search Amazon for new, used, or digital editions.
Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic will be removed from your shelf along with your reading dates, notes and progress.
Track this book, rate it & earn achievementsFree to join • Takes 30 seconds • 34,614+ books