Nothing But Nets Blog

Malaria pervades every community in my homeland, South Sudan. I was in my village, Ayiet, last summer and brought three months’ worth of anti-malarial pills from the United States for my own protection. One morning, my six-year-old brother, Matiok, woke up with a high fever. He was sweating, vomiting, and shaking — the telltale symptoms of malaria that I myself had experienced in a refugee camp in northern Sudan a decade earlier. I gave him my anti-malarial pills and a few days later, he was back up, chasing dragonflies in the field.

Soon, mothers from the village crowded my house seeking what they called “magical pills” for their malaria-afflicted children.