Marissa Mika - Africanizing oncology : creativity, crisis, and cancer in Uganda

NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES

SERIES EDITORS: JEAN ALLMAN, ALLEN ISAACMAN, AND DEREK R. PETERSON

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Kara Moskowitz, Seeing Like a Citizen

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Cheikh Anta Babou, The Muridiyya on the Move

Laura Ann Twagira, Embodied Engineering

Marissa Mika, Africanizing Oncology

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Africanizing Oncology

Marissa Mika

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

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Names: Mika, Marissa, 1981author.

Title: Africanizing oncology : creativity, crisis, and cancer in Uganda / Marissa Mika.

Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2021. | Series: New African histories | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021011141 (print) | LCCN 2021011142 (ebook) | ISBN 9780821424650 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780821447512 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Uganda Cancer Institute. | CancerHospitalsUganda. | OncologyUganda. | Medical policyUganda.

Classification: LCC RC279.U33 M55 2021 (print) | LCC RC279.U33 (ebook) | DDC 616.99/40096761dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011141

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011142

Illustrations

MAPS

1 Uganda

2 Kampala

FIGURES

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude extends to the staff, patients, and patient caretakers of the Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI). Thank you for welcoming me as a historian and ethnographer. Thank you for generously engaging with an outsider during times of great duress and quiet moments of quotidian life. To protect privacy, the names of patients and caretakers are not recorded here, but they are not forgotten.

In 2010, Dr. Jackson Orem agreed to meet with me after a phone call and a brief letter of introduction. Over the years, he has become a dear friend and mentor. He is also an extraordinary advocate for cancer research and care in Uganda. Thanks to Jackson for everything, especially entrusting me with reconstructing the history of this institution. And many thanks to Irene Nassozi for scheduling meetings and helping me on the ground with never-ending paperwork. The past directors of the UCI were astonishingly generous. Dr. John Ziegler mailed me archives and photographs, spent hours on the phone patiently answering questions, and welcomed me to his homes in California. Johns humility, as well as his appreciation and respect for Uganda, helped to shape my own analysis and attempts to write with care. Professor Charles Olweny shaped this research profoundly by keeping the doors of the UCI open throughout the Idi Amin era. I thank him for his work as an oncologist, advocate, and historian. Dr. Edward Katongole-Mbidde generously took time away from his obligations as the director of the Uganda Virus Institute to meet with me and to attend the UCIs first History Symposium in 2014. His singular dedication to the Institute for four decades, and his commitment to the maintenance of high standards in the face of extreme difficulty and scarcity, is nothing less than remarkable. The UCIs current deputy director, Dr. Victoria Walusansa, also deserves special mention for welcoming me to the day-to-day activities of the wards. Other former and current Institute oncologists helped to shape the context for this project in important ways. Dr. Chuck Vogel shared his memoirs. Dr. Robert Comis offered his memories of working at the UCI in the 1970s just as Amin took over. Dr. Avrum Bluming sent photographs he personally took of Idi Amin. The late and esteemed Dr. Richard Morrow kindly shared his memories of taking blood samples in up-country fieldwork.