Malaria...

Even though it is a warm day he is rugged up in a heavy sweater and uncontrollably shivering. 
His usually cheerful face is creased with pain and instead of a friendly greeting he struggles to talk... 'madam, I am feeling somehow bad".
I sit him down and take his temperature, it is unusually high and so I take some blood and do an in-vitro malaria test. 

It takes less than 2 minutes to show up positive.  

Despite being preventable and easily treated, malaria kills almost 500,000 people in Africa every year. 
It is not uncommon for students here to get malaria but fortunately I have testing facilities, medication is relatively cheap and in most cases, effective.
Malaria medication takes around three days to have full effect and generally the students surprise me with their quick recovery. However, there is something about this case that has me unsettled and I decide to go up to the boys dormitory to checkup on him.

The dormitory is crowded and noisy and it takes me a while to make my way through the morass of bunk-beds to find him. In the very back corner he is curled up on his bed, semi conscious and incoherent. I take his temperature and can't help but gasp when I see the reading of 40.6, his body is literally burning up. I ask some questions to his bedmate and find out that he has vomited all the medicine I have given him and hasn't eaten or drunk all day. 

There is something so alarming about being responsible for someone who is so unwell, has no one to care for them and is unable to help themselves. For the next few hours as I work to bring his temperature down and try a different malaria medication I feel ill myself, tossing up whether I should drive him into hospital but knowing that they will not be able to do much more than I can.

That night I wake up many times stressing about his state and as soon as it is light I race back up to the dormitory to check on him. Fortunately my prayers are answered and he is on the mend although it takes four more days of care before he is back walking around and cheerfully greeting me again. 

Two weeks later, thanks to some donated funds a large parcel arrives and we are able to provide mosquito nets for all the boys in the dormitory, hopefully now this situation does not have to be repeated in the near future.