Why Mosquitoes Buzz...

            As I write this, I can hear the long-awaited sound of raindrops hitting my zinc roof. As I’ve written about before, the unpredictable weather pattern this year is something that has impacted my life rather significantly. The yearly rains seem to have taken their time in arriving this year and the past few weeks have been an unpleasant return to the dustiness of dry season.

            But the past few days have brought daily rainstorms and I’m optimistic that we may have finally reached the beginning of rainy season. This means the hillside beyond my house no longer obscured by a dusty haze (giving me a renewed sense of how beautiful this place is), an increase in umbrella salesboys, and an renewed hope that running water will return to my house in the near future. But the advent of rainy season will also have a major negative impact; the rates of malaria transmission will almost certainly increase dramatically.  

            Cameroon lies just north of the equator and is solidly in the endemic malaria zone. Although the geography of the country is varied, residents of all 10 regions experience high rates of malaria transmission. And although mosquitoes directly spread malaria, these mosquitoes just serve as vectors in the transmission between humans. This means that in order for a mosquito to become infected with the parasite that causes malaria, she must first bite an infected individual. In the fight against malaria, Paul Wellstone said it best: “We all do better when we all do better”. In order to best protect vulnerable members of the population (primarily young children, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems), everyone needs to protect themselves to the best of their ability. This protection is widely available and simple enough; sleeping under a bed net every night greatly reduces risk of transmission.

Amadou demonstrates proper bed-net etiquette with
his younger brothers.

            This past weekend marked World Malaria Day (April 25^th), and many Peace Corps Cameroon Volunteers have spent much of the past two months focusing our efforts on malaria prevention activities. Collectively we hung nets, conducted sensitizations, and painted malaria-based murals (PCVs just love those murals!). I’m in the process of trying to organize a bed-net hanging campaign in my health district, piggybacking off an existing door-to-door yellow fever vaccination campaign. All expecting mothers are given free mosquito nets when they go to their local health center for prenatal visits, but I’ve learned that many of these nets never get hung. Over here, getting malaria is a common enough occurrence that it doesn’t inspire the same level of fear that it does back home. But there are nearly 2 million infections and over 3,000 deaths each year in Cameroon alone. But many of my neighbors and friends still openly admit to sleeping without a mosquito net, despite their awareness of the way malaria is transmitted.

            There’s no doubt that the road to a malaria-free Cameroon will be a long and bumpy one. As I’ve been reminded over the course of my service, enacting behavior change is a difficult process. But here’s to the existing efforts of health care professionals and community health workers that have stepped up to fight this widespread disease.