Cancer, Private Healthcare and the Middle Class: Perspectives from Kenya

Abstract:

A nov­el land­scape of health­care and can­cer treat­ment is emerg­ing in Kenya at the inter­sec­tion between an emerg­ing can­cer epi­dem­ic, expand­ing med­ical and health insur­ance mar­kets, a mid­dle class with access to cred­it, and the con­tin­ued evis­cer­a­tion of pub­lic health­care. Fol­low­ing mid­dle-class can­cer patients and their fam­i­lies as they nav­i­gate these land­scapes, I explore the dou­ble binds of can­cer treat­ment as a shift­ing geog­ra­phy of state-of-the-art med­ical tech­nolo­gies in pri­vate facil­i­ties opens up hori­zons of med­ical care just with­in or just beyond reach. Fam­i­lies find them­selves vul­ner­a­ble both to an extrac­tive med­ical mar­ket­place ori­en­tat­ed to mak­ing prof­its and to the ‘ordi­nary cri­sis’ of state health­care under­mined by aus­ter­i­ty and neglect. Explor­ing inter­sec­tions between med­ical, health, and eco­nom­ic pre­car­i­ties as health­care is pri­va­tized and peo­ple are pushed into debt while the state dis­in­vests in pub­lic goods, I explore entan­gle­ments between bio­cap­i­tal, neolib­er­al­ism, chron­ic dis­ease, and the mid­dle class in Kenya.

https://uni-bayreuth.zoom.us/j/63689616916?pwd=S3krbW0zSjR4UUNrNTIyOEtaTU5jZz09

Meet­ing-ID: 636 8961 6916