Power to the people

摘要

Grace Malenga's frustration comes through loud and clear: "Come the first rains, after a week or so, my wards are flooded by sick, convulsing or anaemic kids — a good proportion of whom die, year in, year out. What preventative measures will it take to reverse that?" As a paediatrician and director of the Malaria Alert Centre in Blantyre, Malawi, Malenga finds that decades of medical progress and international effort have changed little for those in the front line of the war against malaria. Blantyre is surrounded by tea fields, forested slopes and some of the most striking mountains in Malawi. But during the rains from November to March, malaria turns this region into killing fields. Its sad claim to fame is the international Blantyre Coma Scale, invented here in 1987, which rates the clinical severity of malaria in children.