IN a remote South African village, Paulina Mhlongo sits in the yard as health workers in green protective gear move briskly through her home, soaking the walls with anti-mosquito insecticide.
Her teenage grandson fell critically ill last year from malaria, the disease that kills more than a quarter of a million people annually and is surging in southern Africa as the climate shifts.
Before this spraying, the family’s “only defence” against malaria-carrying mosquitoes was a rattling fan, said Mhlongo, a 63-year-old retiree.
Her village of Calcutta is in Mpumalanga, one of three provinces in South Africa’s malaria belt experiencing changing rain patterns and rising temperatures that favour mosquito breeding.
Heavy rains leave pools for eggs, while warmer temperatures speed up mosquito development and shorten the malaria parasite’s incubation period.
Source: AFP
