Comic Relief 2015: Peter Capaldi's Africa diary
He's never had a challenge like this one in Doctor Who – but Peter Capaldi discovers hope amid the slums of Malawi
As you stand and watch the mosquitoes hatching on the top of the filthy puddles and streams, the fact that in a night or two they will be biting, infecting and eventually killing so many children, all for the want of a bed net, is almost beyond comprehension. For the world’s poorest communities that is the harsh reality. It’s reckoned that globally the disease takes the life of a child every single minute – something Emma (main image) knew about all too well.
Last year this 43-year-old mother of three lost two of her daughters, the first to HIV/Aids and the second to malaria. The family’s house sits on the bank of the filthy river running through the slum. The back portion of the structure slid away down the bank, leaving Emma, and the six grandchildren she’s left to care for, huddled in the front of the house. With their handful of possessions and school books high on a shelf to keep them safe from the filthy water that floods the place in the rainy season, this is a truly awful situation.
That’s not the worst of it, though. The same floods that destroyed their home also acted as the breeding ground for the mosquitoes that infected her daughter. Without bed nets, her grandchildren are now equally at risk.
Four babies to a bed
That afternoon at Blantyre’s main hospital, I saw first-hand just what this malaria threat does to an already straining health-care system. In the paediatric ward two, three and four babies are forced to share beds as they’re treated to help fight off the parasitic infection they almost certainly contracted while they slept.
A look though the ward’s record of fatalities is startling; entry after entry listing malaria as the cause of death, child after child taken because they slept unprotected. Comic Relief has helped to distribute millions of nets across parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the effect has been positive. But there’s more to do, especially here in Malawi.
The village of hope
The next day I was taken to meet the people running another Comic Relief-supported project, this time working with those affected by HIV/Aids. Like Malaria, much progress has been made in tackling this epidemic and the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs has improved the day-to-day reality of living with the condition for many in Africa’s poorest communities – but the stigma still remains.
