Paper long abstract:

Since 2004, Uganda provides free treatment to HIV/AIDS patients. In 2010, it is still far off the goals towards "universal access". Access to treatment varies greatly among different providers, which is determined by a complex entanglement of stable and unstable supply sources in the country. This paper focuses on the technical and scientific domain of free treatment that operates as a "total planning" of budgets, drug prices, and patient numbers. Large surveys are conducted to establish the relationship between drugs and the available budget, vice versa, how treatment regimens can be adjusted to what is affordable in the country, in order to plan how many lives can be saved at which cost. Moreover planning for a totality of elements in the supply of ART presumes that contingencies in the "social live of pharmaceuticals" can be controlled. It is against this background of a situated and experimental configuration of rigorous scientific methods, health economics, and structural instabilities in the supply side of ART, where practices in regulating mass HIV/AIDS treatment program are translated into a therapeutic market for ART.