Malaria remains one of the main causes of mortality and morbidity in sub-Saharan Africa. Matian van Soest looks at the malaria epidemic in the peri-urban zones of Uganda's capital Kampala against the backdrop of recent socio-ecological transformations.Based on long-term ethnographic research, the book provides a holistic picture of the malaria epidemic in central Uganda, revealing the highly localized character of an epidemic that once spanned across almost the entire globe. Understanding, and ultimately tackling the disease, requires an appreciation of the social, political, as well as ecological circumstances that frame this epidemic.

Matian van Soest, born in 1984, is a social and cultural anthropologist with a regional focus on Eastern Africa and a thematic interest in infectious diseases. He works as scientific coordinator of the collaborative research center »Future Rural Africa« at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne and is a member of the AG Medical Anthropology of the German Anthropological Association.