DESIGNER

Christian Guevara

PROFILE/DESCRIPTION

Article text courtesy of nytimes.com

 

An Invasive Mosquito Threatens Catastrophe in Africa

The narrow wooden benches in the student health clinic at Dire Dawa University in Ethiopia’s second-largest city began to fill up in March last year: feverish students slumped against their friends, cradling aching heads in their hands.

Helen Asaminew, the presiding nurse, was baffled. The students had the hallmark symptoms of malaria. But people didn’t get malaria in cities, and the students hadn’t traveled anywhere. It was the dry season. There was no malaria for hundreds of miles.

Yet when Ms. Asaminew had their blood tested, the telltale ring-shaped parasite signaling malaria turned up in most of the samples. By April, one out of every two students living in the male dormitories had the disease, 1,300 cases in all.