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Book ID: CBB001420179

Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic (2012)

Livingston, Julie (Author)

Duke University Press

ISBN: 9780822353270

Publication Date: 2012
Physical Details: 248 pp.; ill.; maps; bibl.; index
Language: English

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Cancer; tumors Hospitals and clinics Epidemics Public health Medicine and government Health care Medicine and economics 20th century, late 21st century Botswana

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.

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Reviewed By

Review Brada, Betsey (2014) Review of "Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 218-219). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001420179/

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