She Loves Me, She Bites Me

Yes. She love me, she loves me so much that she can’t resist biting. She feels it’s her divine right, what an audacity! When it happened to me for the first time, I held my nerves somehow thinking I will be careful the next time. But voila again! Ouch. She is obsessed, I am feared. The feeling of her clinching me makes me go weak in my knees. But that’s how it is…her so confident and me so diffident.

I call her Anny. People call her Female Anopheles.

2 times in less than a year, and you have more than enough reasons to feel dreaded. Malaria comes with lots of disturbances especially when it’s in one of its worst variants (read flavors). Last year when I was struck with the flavor Plasmodium Falciparum (the worst flavor in its category), that was painful. Yes it was. And that time Anny didn’t come alone, she had her friend Dengy a.k.a. Aedes Aegypti with her too. They together caused me my life’s first hospitalization, 13 days straight & tough. Grrr! Having brought around of it, things looked like once in a life time experience. If only it was.

But nope I was Struck again, last week. Flavor: Plasmodium Vivax, A less severe than the last one, but more moving because it brought back with it the frightening memories.

Next flavor? God forbids me & all.

Ahem! Just as a reminder, Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases in the world. It alone accounts for more than One Million deaths every year. And if not cured fully, it has the highest rate of relapse. Does the Anny kind feel proud of helping keep the growing human population at control? Please don’t! Let us handle it ourselves.

As there are no vaccines currently that can prevent Malaria, few precautions worth taking:

1. Be Clean, Eat Clean, Keep Clean.
   
2. Use Mosquito Nets in night.
   
3. If nets are not available/possible, use Repellents, Coils or Anti-mosquito gels. Especially while travelling.
   
4. Use Indoor residual spraying.
   
5. Avoid concentration of water in open areas.
   
6. In case you doubt of the symptoms, consult your doctor ASAP before it worries you and your dear ones.
   

On a side note, I feel that when there are so many species getting extinct every day, why don’t these harmful ones? Huh? Oh, The Food Chain, I know I know.

Anyways, Wish you all a healthy life!