Today is World Malaria Day and in honor of that, PCVs all
over Africa are blogging about malaria (BAMM...blog about malaria month). I don’t have much experience with malaria
myself but have had a lot of students that have gotten malaria as well as my
supervisor. One of my best friends in PC actually got malaria last month and
from her experience it is NOT a fun thing to go through. She was lucky because
we talk daily or weekly prophylaxis and have treated mosquito nets to use in
order to reduce our risk of getting malaria. However, many Mozambican children
and adults are not as lucky. They don’t have the means to get these medicines
or bed nets and therefore their chances of getting malaria are very likely.
Some quick facts about Malaria:
- Malaria is a life threatening disease transmitted caused by parasites that are transmitted through bites of infected mosquitoes
- Malaria is the leading cause of death in Mozambique—it accounts for 29% of all deaths and 42% of deaths among children under five years old.
- Malaria is preventable and curable
- People who are at a greater risk of malaria are young children, pregnant women and people who HIV/AIDS
- Diagnosing and treating malaria at an early stage helps in reducing the disease, preventing deaths as well as reducing malaria transmission.
- Malaria is the #1 killer in Africa
(Statistics from stompoutmalaria.org and WHO)
I haven’t been affected by malaria in the sense that I have
had the disease but have seen the side effects in Nacucha. Many of my students
have had to miss multiple weeks of school to recover from malaria; children of
our neighbors and friends have died due to malaria and many students and
professors still don’t know the causes or prevention methods of malaria.
This week in my Informatica class I asked my students to
write about a problem in Mozambique. Among the many different topics quite a
few students wrote about malaria. It was really great to see all their
knowledge of the disease and to get to talk with them about this. I was also
very impressed with the other topics my 11th graders wrote about:
the water crisis in Nacala, HIV/AIDS, other diseases in Mozambique and domestic
violence. I’m looking forward to reading all of their papers about these
topics. I’m hoping to have more conversations about malaria and HIV/AIDS with
my students to spread awareness and discuss ways to prevent these diseases.
Last week I had a PC conference in Nampula to talk about
sites, get new ideas and see other Moz 19 PCVs that I hadn’t seen since
December. It was so nice to get out of site and talk with my friends about
classroom ideas and secondary projects. After being gone for over a week it
felt nice to come back to site. The guard at the school was so excited to see
me Tuesday night that he greeted me with a hug. My students seemed really happy
to have me back as well—I forgot to mention to one of my classes that I was
going to be gone for a week so they were apparently worried I wasn’t coming
back. Oops :) It
was really nice and rejuvenating—I feel ready to start some new projects and
get teaching again!
My plans for the coming weeks:
- My roommate and I are starting a REDES group (girls group to promote sexual health and awareness, empowerment of women as well as other important life skills) and holding an informational meeting this weekend. I hope some girls show up!
- I decided even though I’m not a huge fan of Informatica class my students really enjoy that time on the computer. Therefore, I’m going to start a computer club so they have more time with the computers and can practice their typing skills (which really need some work).
- Next Monday I’m going to visit the primary school with Irma Rita and talk to her about a new program PC has called EGRA, which works to improve early grade reading. I’m really excited to hopefully get more involved with the primary school and do some work there.
Hope you learned some new facts today during World Malaria Day!
How will you Stomp Out Malaria in 2013?
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