Viral Hepatitis and a Hospital Infrastructure in Ruins in Cameroon

Ethnographic material dealing with the contemporary viral hepatitis B and C epidemics in Cameroon provide a window onto the acute constraints and shortcomings of hospital care for patients, families, and health care workers. Although viral hepatitis has long been an invisible epidemic in international and global public health regimes, in Cameroon, it is diagnosed, made visible, and felt as a financially daunting and feared disease. Building on Ann Stoler's framework of imperial ruins, I consider hepatitis as an iatrogenic disease, emerging from scarce and unsound hospital infrastructures, such as blood transfusion techniques, as well as colonial public health vaccination practices. Such hospital technologies continue to produce anxieties, risk and excessive health expenses and hence cast their shadows on the future.