Staying Alive considers photographs that were a tool in medical practices and research, and the documentation of the history of the Uganda Cancer Institute. It gives an insight into the past of the institute and asks questions concerning the ethics around medical photographs and depictions of patients. Medical historian Marissa Mika, who wrote her dissertation about the Uganda Cancer Institute contributed texts from her fieldnotes and Andrea Stultiens reflects on her own position, as a former cancer patient, in relation to the patients she photographed in 2012. John Nyende and Coleb Butungi, both medical illustrators, translated historical medical photographs into drawings, guaranteeing the privacy of the patients but still forcing us to think about their presence. In a place where death is often around the corner, photographs freeze time, but keep pasts and the people living in them alive at the same time.