The will to speak out: Medical anthropologist and patient in times of COVID-19 in Peru

Abstract

Using autoethnographic research, I analyze the experience of being an oncology patient during the COVID-19 pandemic in Lima, Peru, the country with the highest number of COVID-19 deaths per million people worldwide. I reflect on my own fears and decisions related to medical treatment and work, since they organized most of my daily life and were significantly impacted by the public health emergency. These experiences were shaped by global and local inequalities in labor conditions as well as access to healthcare facilities and systemic therapies. I speak out as a “vulnerable participant-observer” from my social position as a lower-middle-class working woman, contract university professor, and medical anthropologist facing a still stigmatized disease in her country.