How to fight malaria one poem at a time

It is a disease borne by mosquitoes and in the worst-case scenario, you will die from it – that about summed up what American poet Cameron Conaway knew about malaria when he arrived in Thailand.

Little did he know that soon he was going to deploy an unusual method to help fight the disease, which kills more than half a million people per year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

He became the first poet-in-residence at Bangkok’s Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), one of the world’s leading malaria research institutes.

The former martial arts fighter soon found himself on the road, travelling for seven months to malaria-ridden villages in Thailand and Bangladesh to gather impressions for his poems.

“What inspired me was being involved with something at the intersection between poetry and medicine, something that meant poetry could serve a social purpose,” Conaway told me.

Conaway, now a creative writing instructor at Penn State Brandywine, part of the Pennsylvania State University, released his book “Malaria Poems” last autumn. It became one of National Public Radio’s top books of 2014.

The poems touch on everything from counterfeit medicines to stillbirths and brain damage caused by malaria to travelling bards who perform plays to raise awareness about the disease.

Each malaria poem is paired with a related fact, for example malaria in pregnancy causes 200,000 stillbirths in Africa per year.

“As the shadow attaches to her toes/ so the mother slings the still/born over her shoulder until night/when her birthed treasure is buried/with the others under the blankets./At cock’s crow she presses the pink/of his unformed lips to her breast./Soon the dead will have another/Birthday, and she will tell him stories, ” a poem reads.

He also read the poems to villagers during his travels to raise awareness about malaria, which can be prevented by taking precautions such as using bed nets.

“They were surprised that someone would do this but also happy that someone was paying attention to the problem,” he said.

Conaway also found out that malaria has a poetic history.

Ronald Ross, who won a Nobel Prize in 1902 for identifying malaria parasites in mosquitos, wrote poetry about the disease and his discovery, referring to malaria as “million-murdering death” in one of his poems.

American writer and illustrator Theodor Seuss Geisel. best known for his children’s books, used poetry to raise awareness among U.S. soldiers about the dangers of malaria.

Geisel created a booklet explaining to the troops how to avoid harmful encounters with “blood-thirsty Ann,” the character he created to represent anopheles, the genus of the mosquitoes that transmit the disease.

Of course, it is not possible to measure what impact “Malaria Poems” may have in helping to end the disease. But as Conaway said, to raise awareness about malaria we must go beyond charts and facts and try to reach people’s hearts.

This article is published in collaboration with the Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

To keep up with the Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Author: Astrid Zweynert is an award-winning journalist, editor and social media specialist with a passion for online storytelling.

Image: A female Aedes aegypti  mosquito is shown in this 2006 Center for Disease Control (CDC) photograph released to Reuters on October 30, 2013. REUTERS/James Gathany/CDC/Handout via Reuters.