From Africanizing oncology to decolonizing global health: reflections on the biomedical turn in African health histories

Abstract

The questions and preoccupations animating this book were not so much about decolonizing global health as they were about how to write with sensitivity, honesty and integrity about the history of biomedical research and care in Eastern Africa. The theoretical architecture of the book was informed by discussions of experiments travelling 1 and the promises and shortcomings of the antiretroviral technofix for HIV. 2 I also engaged with scholars writing about the material realities of biomedicine in Africa, including debris, 3 traces, 4 improvisation, 5 capacity, 6 scrambling for Africa, 7 and Africa as a living laboratory. 8 ‘Decolonization’ was not on my radar. In the book, I write that we have ‘so much to learn from how Ugandan physician intellectuals, fieldworkers savvy in forging friendships, resilient patients, and invested caretakers keep things going: be they buildings, bodies, experiments, kitchens, therapeutics, blood banks, or optimism’ (p. 24).