A Hotbed for Liver Cancer: Biomedicine, Exposure and Uncertainty in West Africa (360G-Wellcome-209911_Z_17_Z)

Incidence rates of primary liver cancer vary strikingly across the globe. West Africans are more likely than most populations to develop and die from it. Focusing on Senegal and The Gambia, my project investigates how this association between place and intensity of susceptibility to liver cancer has been understood, and how it has been maintained by gaps in protection from risky exposures and fatal illness. Its key goals are to: 1) Situate biomedical models of liver cancer aetiology and prevention in West Africa, by tracing the emergence of current biomedical knowledge and uncovering past and alternative explanations. 2) Delineate the past and emerging contours of partial, public prevention of exposure to major risks factors: chronic infection with Hepatitis B Virus and food contaminated by aflatoxin (toxic metabolites of fungi that colonize crops, notably groundnuts). 3) Observe the embodiment, materialization and enactment of liver cancer in local moral economies and infrastructures of care, and identify the dilemmas that arise. Combining historical and ethnographic methods, this project aims to elucidate how endemic exposures and intrinsic limits of care have been mutually shaped, in West Africa, by contingent political, economic and scientific histories of partial protection.