Cancer, chemotherapy, and HIV: Living with cancer amidst comorbidity in a South African township

摘要: Abstract Cancer is on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa. In South Africa, where cancer detection, intervention, and care are available for many citizens, poorly detected understood among politically economically marginalized communities rural urban centers. These trends reflected a history of systematic marginalization such contexts from public resources, including education health care, stemming racism wealth inequity. This article investigates how Black Africans residing Soweto, township Johannesburg, perceive experience breast prostate cancers amidst multiple, concurrent medical conditions. We used convenience sampling to recruit 80 study participants already enrolled longitudinal studies at tertiary hospital Soweto between June August 2017. included 50 women diagnosed with 30 men cancer; three-quarters sample had two or more comorbidities, HIV, hypertension, diabetes, anxiety, others. Many described sickness terms any physical ill-health that affected daily routines, but rarely was it associated exclusively specific disease. Men fear than HIV hypertension—two most common diseases. found this may be part reflection people feared demonized their diagnoses, calling “a demon!”, framing through trauma aggressive treatments like chemotherapy (“the red devil!”) disfiguration mastectomy. contrast, men's were often hormonal therapy normal side effect aging. Intervening think about improve live well condition other cascading social problems they face.