Antibiotics have made it possible for people to live longer, healthier lives. Antimicrobial resistance, however, is an increasing problem, especially in low-resource settings. This project will employ a range of methods from microbiology, clinical medicine and sociology to produce new knowledge about how AMR genes spread especially in poor West African regions, in areas where local capacity to address AMR is lagging behind, and identify ways to curb the spread of AMR. This knowledge can be utilized in national and international health policy and medical research.

In this research project, I examine and analyse globalised health care policies and the related infrastructures in the Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania. I will provide a holistic portrayal of a health system and the peoples it serves by exploring the vicissitudes of sickness and health and the plurality of therapeutic trajectories. The project produces new knowledge about the state of public and private health care systems and infrastructures under free-market conditions by using a local-scale approach to examine a global issue. Additionally, the project will contribute to a broader understanding of health-seeking behaviours by using ethnographic methods to analyse social dynamics of health care in the community and within health care systems. The project has an explicit aim of producing information that will have direct uses in improving health care systems and infrastructure in the developing world.