Individuals who live in the United States are granted with the knowledge about what cancer is and what biomedical treatments are possible to receive, to get rid of the disease. Others do not run with the same privilege of having the knowledge or the materials to fight cancer. Julie Livingston addresses this issue and many more, through her own experiences as a participant observer in the oncology ward of Princess Marina Hospital located in Gaborone, Botswana. She addresses how medical resources within the ward are critical and the knowledge of cancer within the citizens is poor. Her ethnography takes place primary in the ward, where patients enter the doors every day with critical conditions of cancer, and where the doctors, specifically
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Hospitals in Africa are mostly prepared for HIV and other viruses. That is because HIV has become a common virus within the country. The doctors and the citizens both know what HIV is and how they can treat it. Livingston stated that in Botswana “a quarter of adults have HIV” (11). HIV has become a critical role in citizens’, because “HIV patients will contract a virus-associated cancer either before being initiated… or during the process…” (10). She then describes, that when patients start to notice strange symptoms or bumps on their body, they either ignore it or they attend the local hospitals. She describes that in many occasions local doctors are not able to specify on what the patient has, or they either misdiagnose the patients with tuberculosis. Livingston stated on page 48, “lung cancers are routinely misdiagnosed as tuberculosis and treated with antibiotics… before they were referred to Dr. P who finally established proper diagnoses”. Livingston clearly states how patients react to cancer and how they even wish to have Tuberculosis instead, as it is something more familiar to them. In the book there is a well explained comparison of American women and African women who experience cancer. As American women have more knowledge of cancer and know other individuals that have or have had cancer, their own cancer
Hospitals in Africa are mostly prepared for HIV and other viruses. That is because HIV has become a common virus within the country. The doctors and the citizens both know what HIV is and how they can treat it. Livingston stated that in Botswana “a quarter of adults have HIV” (11). HIV has become a critical role in citizens’, because “HIV patients will contract a virus-associated cancer either before being initiated… or during the process…” (10). She then describes, that when patients start to notice strange symptoms or bumps on their body, they either ignore it or they attend the local hospitals. She describes that in many occasions local doctors are not able to specify on what the patient has, or they either misdiagnose the patients with tuberculosis. Livingston stated on page 48, “lung cancers are routinely misdiagnosed as tuberculosis and treated with antibiotics… before they were referred to Dr. P who finally established proper diagnoses”. Livingston clearly states how patients react to cancer and how they even wish to have Tuberculosis instead, as it is something more familiar to them. In the book there is a well explained comparison of American women and African women who experience cancer. As American women have more knowledge of cancer and know other individuals that have or have had cancer, their own cancer