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Short abstract:

In this paper, I map and outline diabetes care in the Serbian healthcare system, and the interactions between expert patients, medical professionals, and lay persons with diabetes. I analyze how care gets enacted through practices of mutual aid in a healthcare system under neoliberal transformation.

Long abstract:

In this paper, I map and outline diabetes care in the Serbian healthcare system. Alongside the public and private healthcare sectors, I situate civil society organizations as the unofficial third branch of the healthcare system in Serbia. I look at how different actors: medical professionals, government officials, pharmaceutical representatives, diabetes activists, and lay persons with diabetes interact and construe diabetes care in Serbia and how they imagine it should look like. A particular focus of this paper is the interaction between diabetes activists – expert patients – and lay persons with diabetes as they navigate the complex healthcare system. How does care get enacted through practices of mutual aid in the context of a public healthcare system that is being dismantled? How does medical technology, such as insulin pumps, sensors, and consumables such as insulin pens and glucose test strips facilitate the interaction between these various actors? Ultimately, I aim to answer the question of how does this collective tinkering (Mol et al. 2010, Heerings et al. 2021) (re)shape not just the healthcare system, but social relations between its actors, and what IS care in the context of diabetes management and treatment in Serbia.