Ten Conversations for Health

Malaria bites
Malaria bites,
At night,
At dusk and dawn,
It drips, inside us,
With a drop of blood.
And then pulses,
Around us, in a fever,
Which heats and cools,
With its own day and night,
Waxing and waning,
Us white like the moon,
In stars of sweat.
Malaria bites,
Across our villages,
In our homes,
Our children,
Our pregnant women,
It smells them out.
We can smell it out too,
Test, treat fevers,
Sleep in bed-nets,
Spray and drain away,
Puddles and pools,
Where malaria cools,
Seeds and breeds.
And talk in schools,
We need conversations,
In families, classrooms,
Villages virtual and real,
In palaces and shacks,
Where malaria bites,
We can bite back.
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