Read part one of Zeke Emanuel’s Africa Diaries here.
About six hours after leaving Dakar, Senegal’s capital, we arrive in Kissan, a village of 526 people that lies in the Tambacounda Region. We left paved road about 30 miles ago. After bouncing on rutted, puddle-filled paths through the bush, we enter a collection of one-room huts made of cinder blocks with thatched roofs. Chickens, ducks, and goats roam the reddish-orange mud alleyways.
Kissan is one of the hot spots for malaria, a deadly disease that mosquitoes carry and that killed 900,000 people last year alone. Since the fall of 2008, Kissan has been targeted for intense intervention. And the lead person in Kissan in this battle against malaria is Yaya Camera. Kissan is too small for any dedicated health facility. Instead it has Yaya—a tall, very thin man who says he is a 35-year old farmer but who looks like a 20-year old college student. He is a DSDOM—a volunteer selected by the village to be their care person for malaria. DSDOMs are trained to provide care for villagers who present with fever, a common symptom of malaria. They are given a vest, training in malaria diagnosis, along with a wooden box equipped that included rapid diagnostic tests to determine if the fever is malaria, combination anti-malaria pills, and a treatment log. Yaya completed training in September 2008.