Making Diabetes The Politics of Diagnostics in Uganda

This book asks how the glucometer, the often only choice to diagnose diabetes in Uganda, contributes to the making of this disease in a setting with weak health infrastructure. Diabetes is regarded as one of the most challenging global health issues of the 21st century. Especially countries with weak health infrastructure are struggling to deal with the increased demands this chronic disease entails. Tracing the effects of a diagnostic device, the glucometer, this book examines how it contributes to the making of diabetes in contemporary Uganda. Arlena S. Liggins demonstrates that depending on who uses the glucometer, the outcomes may go far beyond diagnosis. The book draws a complex picture of hopes and misplaced expectations, of trust and mistrust in a technology to which access in the first place is all but a given.