Pressure: ageing, hypertension and social self-care in Kampala, Uganda

This article explores hypertension self-management based on ethnographic research with older adults in Kampala, Uganda in 2018-19. Participants described strategies to prevent and manage high blood pressure and related complications, often referred to as pressure and conceptualised in relation to economic stress. The article is grounded in the knowledge of older women, whose extensive care responsibilities are understood as both a cause and consequence of 'pressure'. This knowledge is especially crucial in the context of inadequate health and social security provision, prolonging gendered burdens of care in later life. Pressure can be understood as an embodied concept through which structural injustice and economic stress is named and navigated. This ethnography contributes to feminist literature on chronicity and (self-) care, moral responsibility, and subjectivity. It also has policy implications for the social security of older people living and working in urban Uganda, and for critical global health approaches to hypertension and related syndemics.