Malaria, Poems

III. Bio Battle I

58 of blood—more than her own body weight. Unlike other mosquitoes, the female Anopheles doesn’t wait until after feeding to start the digestion process . She excretes water from the blood as she feeds. This allows her to pack into her stomach more of the blood’s protein while getting rid of what she doesn’t need. She lifts in a slow, tottering flight and moves to a nearby vertical surface. There, sluggish from gorging the blood meal, she continues digesting the blood that will provide the nutrients and proteins necessary for her eggs to develop. “In her blood meal, she has ingested red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and other constituents of human blood. And she sucked up something else as well: some protozoan stowaways. “The mosquito, in a simple act essential for reproduction, ensures the reproduction and spread of another species:” Falciparum. “The malaria cycle begins once more.” —Brian W. Simpson, “Putting the Bite on Malaria,” Johns Hopkins Public Health, 2001 III. BIO BATTLE I Sickle Cell: “evidence indicating that persons with sickle cell trait are protected against the most serious form of malaria.” —Michael Woods, “Detection Center Set for Sickle Cell Anemia” Thalassemia: “disease may account for much lower malaria mortality.” —“Decreased Malaria Morbidity in the Tharu People Compared to Sympatric Populations in Nepal” G6PD: “the common African form of G6PD . . . deficiency is associated with a 46–58% reduction in risk of severe malaria” —“Natural selection of hemi- and heterozygotes for G6PD” Duffy: “The resistance factor to Plasmodium vivax in blacks. The Duffyblood -group genotype, FyFy” —title of an article in The New England Journal of Medicine ...