Recent Notes 45: Malaria's special day
26 April 2025
EDITED BY KEITH JACKSON
Today is World Malaria Day
| Keith Jackson with assistance from Medscape
NOOSA – I remember all too clearly my two bouts with malaria in Papua New Guinea. The first occurred without my knowledge until later blood tests. It was 1966 and I was at my remote school at Gagl in Chimbu District, as it was then. My second, and far more serious, hospitalised me for two weeks in Kieta, Bougainville, in 1972. That one came with pneumonia and bronchitis – a powerful mix. More than 50 year have passed, and so it seems has the malaria.
So today is World Malaria Day. Malaria is an ancient and continuously unmatched parasitic cause of human suffering. The Plasmodium using the mosquito to gad about and find its victims permeates the tropical and subtropical world. Historically, it has crushed societies, devastated militaries and hampered economic growth. It continues to wreak havoc, targeting and killing the most vulnerable people.
The most common human-infecting Plasmodium species are the most dangerous. The previously animal-borne species P knowlesi is increasingly affecting humans in forested regions of countries in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, which is PNG folks.
As I write this piece, a report comes through from Kinshasa that says testing has confirmed that an initially unidentified illness that killed more than 50 people in northwest Democratic Republic of Congo was indeed malaria.
Photos of PNG politicians wanted
| From Helen Gardner
CANBERRA, ACT - Along with my colleagues Brad Underhill and Keimelo Gima, I'm working on a book of extracts from the House of Assembly Debates between 1972 and 1975, to be published in time for the 50th anniversary of independence in September. The speeches are fantastic, full of life and ideas and strong debates about the nation to come.
We are including some photos from the National Archives of Australia and a few from other places but are struggling to find images of some important people. Those we are missing include Josephine Abaijah and Tei Abal. The Post Courier doesn't seem to keep an archive of photographs but I know there are some great photographs out there.
If anyone has photographs of those two in particular and are happy to have them in the book, properly attributed, then I would be very grateful.
Helen can be contacted at [email protected] or through this website - KJ
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