Paper short abstract:

This paper explores diabetes management practices in low resource settings

Paper long abstract:

Diabetes is growing concern in low and middle income countries, with the WHO estimating that more than 80% of diabetes deaths occur in these countries. Yet our anthropological understanding of diabetes experiences, management and care practices are most based on ethnographic research in the Global North, while African research is still mostly concerned with infectious diseases: HIV, TB, malaria and - recently of course - Ebola.

In contexts characterised several barriers to diabetes management (drug, staff and infrastructure shortages, financial costs), high levels of mortality and poverty, uncertainties emerge with regard to perceptions of causes, access to care and efficacy of care. Partly as a result, patients alternate or concurrently use biomedical, traditional and/or faith healing practices.

This paper raises anthropological questions of what is at stake in the management of diabetes of diabetes in this context by focusing on trust endowed on measuring devices and the results they produce, trust on efficacy and effectiveness of diabetes management practices (diet, physical activity) and trust on their bodies to know and manage diabetes. These questions are explored using concepts of body, embodiment and self.