A globalised malaria?: Musings of a historian on COVID-19

He stretched himself and scratched his thighs where a mosquito had bitten him as he slept. Another one was wailing near his ear. He slapped the ear and hoped he had killed it. Why do they always go for one’s ear? … “Mosquito,” Okonkwo’s mother told him “has asked ear to marry him, where upon ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. ‘How much longer do you think you will live? she asked. ‘You are already a skeleton.

To the Europeans, the disease, along with other factors like slave trade and the Maxim guns, had helped to traumatise and weaken the African resistance to imperialism. Those Europeans who dared to invade Africa at that pristine stage came face to face with the force of malaria. Early European explorers account for their gory experiences in their forays into the interior of Africa and particularly of their most dreaded enemy, malaria which was “far more deadly than the leopard”. It was generally recognised that they were most prevalent in the swampy areas, but the mode of infection was shrouded in mystery.

Burton reported that it was plagued with periodic epidemics of yellow fever, which used to clear off almost all the White population. In 1862, in such an outbreak, “one ship, the Osprey, lost all her crew, 16 to 17 men, except the master…” and out of a total of about 300 Europeans between March and July of 1862, five doctors, five clerks and 146 men died of malaria.

In 1901 the European population had risen to 397 but the number of deaths had fallen to 17. In 1903 there were 12 deaths out of a White population of 460; and in 1905 from a rising population of 533, there were 12 deaths and 88 invalids.

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