Description
Book SynopsisCombining methods from African studies, science and technology studies, and medical anthropology, Marissa Mika considers the Uganda Cancer Institute as a microcosm of the Ugandan state and as a lens through which to trace the political, technological, moral, and intellectual aspirations and actions of health care providers and patients.
Trade Review“Mika’s lively history shows how Ugandan physician-scientists used cancer research to build oncology care and infrastructure over five decades of labile national politics, pervasive scarcity, and often ephemeral international partnerships. This engaging account illuminates struggles that shaped both global oncology knowledge and the fates of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans facing cancer diagnoses.” -- Claire L. Wendland, author of A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School
“Based on rich historical and ethnographic research,
Africanizing Oncology provides an intimate, and at times harrowing view of the day-to-day activities of care, research, and healing that permitted physicians, researchers, nurses, and patients to survive civil war, structural adjustment, and massive global disparities in health resources to build and sustain an African cancer research institute. The book is a remarkable achievement.” -- Randall M. Packard, author or A History of Global Health: Interventions into the Lives of Other Peoples
“In this historically and ethnographically rich book, Marissa Mika shows how African doctors and nurses practice oncology by creating, adapting, and transforming medical infrastructures. Tracing the life of the Uganda Cancer Institute through historical periods of independence, dictatorship, war, structural adjustment, and the HIV pandemic, this powerful book reveals the challenges and opportunities of Africanizing oncology. This is a landmark study on the history—and future—of global oncology.” -- Carlo Caduff, author of The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger
“In recounting half a century of research and care at the Uganda Cancer Institute, Marissa Mika tells an unforgettable story of the power of connections and the consequences of their loss. Ugandan physician/researchers and their staff proved the value of therapies because they had made friendships that motivated families to return to Kampala for follow-up, but that knowledge became useless when funders’ priorities changed and international partnerships ended. Mika’s story of UCI shows horrifying wounds—and the possibility of healing—in postindependence Uganda, in global health, and in the way we think about the world.” -- Holly Hanson, author of To Speak and Be Heard: Seeking Good Government in Uganda, ca. 1500–2015
