« Tu as grillé ta première ligne ! ». Anthropologie de l’échec thérapeutique dans le traitement du VIH au Cameroun

Abstract

Twenty years after the introduction of antiretrovirals in Africa, the increasing number of treatment failures, often related to viral resistance, threatens to undermine the goals of eliminating the HIV epidemic by 2030. In Cameroon, treatment failures affect nearly a third of people on ARV treatment. This article proposes an analysis of people’s perceptions and experience of treatment failure and shows how, in the social and cultural context of Cameroon, individual and collective factors contribute to generating situations of treatment failure. It also analyses the way in which the caregiver-patient relationship is redefined in a situation of therapeutic failure, the adaptation of the care system and its limits, and how the stakes of therapeutic failure are considered at the international level.

Keywords

• anthropology
• treatment failure
• Cameroun
• antiretroviral therapy
• HIV/AIDS