[Background music ]
[Narrator:] It's time to quit for the day. The afternoon has worn itself out. In a short
while now, it will be dark.
Yes, it's time to let the cotton and tobacco go. Time to get the mules and horses, time
to milk the cows if you keep cows, time to quit work and head for home. Time for supper.
[Sound of banging on a pan with a ladle.]
[Woman:] Come and get it.
[Narrator:] Come and get it, iced tea, corn pones and grits, turnip greens, pork chops maybe.
It's been a long day and stomachs are empty.
Now supper is over and it's evening time and this is the time we want to talk about. Our
story is about the time of day when it's getting dark and cool, about resting time.
[Man singing song.]
Yes, this is resting time. A time to sit quietly and talk and play some music and sing a little
if you've got a voice for things, but resting time is a danger time too.
The hours that come after dark are dangerous hours. Mosquito hours from dark to dawn, the
malaria-carrying mosquitoes search for food and they bite people who are sleeping or sitting
quietly or moving only a little.
The cool hours of early dark are dangerous. This is a time when the mosquitoes do their work.
At this hour the call of come and get it echoes over the swamp and mosquitoes come to find
the supper. "Come and get it" echoes in the dark days.
Come and get it and the mosquitoes come from the sinkholes, from pools choked with
grass, weeds, twigs, and flowers.
From creeks crowded with water plants, from all these places mosquitoes come searching
for supper and they come from their hiding places in hollow tree stumps, from the dark,
cool corners behind them, from the dark cool corners of stables, from the dark cool corners of barns.
Yes, evening is suppertime for the malaria mosquitoes too. They leave the wet places
where they breed in the dark, cool places where they hide during the heat of the day,
and they come looking for their supper.
They come looking for you or somebody like you looking for people.
This is the Anopheles quadrimaculatus -- you can call her quad for short. You can recognize
her by the way she stands on her head when she bites.
This other mosquito stands hunched up. It's annoying but it can't give you malaria...but
remember this one, the mosquito that stands on its head, the malaria mosquito.
She doesn't make much noise and her bite doesn't sting or hurt much. So the little girl who
was bitten won't say anything about the bite. Not now.
But in a few weeks she's sick, call it swamp fever, chills or ague, but whatever it's called,
this is malaria. She shivers with cold for a few hours and then burns with fever.
[ Background music and singing. Image of young girl in a rocking chair.]
People who have malaria are so tired and weak for many months. This is malaria, the malaria
that passes from the body of the mosquito to the body of the person when the mosquito bites.
Malaria makes millions sick every year. It keeps men from work in the fields,
and women from work in the home.
Malaria wears people down and it wears them out and when a man is rundown, his land runs
down and his home runs down, and his wife and his children, they run down too.
Malaria doesn't kill many but it makes millions unfit for work, it makes them poor
and it keeps them poor.
Here's how malaria gets to people. The little girl is sick with malaria. She's had no treatment.
Now a mosquito bites her again and takes some blood from her body, and with her blood takes malaria.
The sickness grows in the mosquito's body. In a few weeks, if that mosquito comes back
to this house and infects one of the family by biting them, that person will become sick.
A few weeks later he has chills and fever. The mosquito has taken the malaria from his
sister's blood and put it into his blood. The farmer looks at both his children
and worries, and then....
[Man:] We've got two sick in the house now.
[Woman:] I think we better get a doctor. Better get him now.
[Man:] Yeah, no use thinking about the money it'll cost. We can't let them go on like this.
And I got to have Jim in the fields. I can't make out unless I got him helping.
[Woman:] Malaria always comes when the crops need looking after...always stays 'til the
crops are in. And you can't afford to be sick.
[Narrator:] So the doctor comes. He examines the boy and his sister. Yes, this looks like
malaria, but the doctor makes sure. He takes a few drops of blood from the finger of each patient.
The blood is smeared on a small piece of glass. Then the blood is examined under the powerful
magnifying glass of a microscope in a laboratory.
This is what the microscope shows; those little spots in the blood, the spots that are circles,
those are the parasites that cause malaria.
Now the doctor is sure and he gives him and his sister quinine.
Sometimes a doctor prescribes atabrine or another medicine.
This medicine destroys the malaria in their blood and helps them get well
Some people need special treatment. The doctor decides what that treatment should be
and then the doctor speaks to the farmer.
[Doctor:] The medicine is going to help them get well, but if you want to protect your
family against malaria, there are other things you'll have to do.
[Man:] I'll do anything I can, doctor.
[Doctor:] You can start by putting mosquito netting over both the sickbeds. That's fine.
That net will keep the mosquitoes away from them and then the mosquitoes won't be able
to bite them and carry the malaria to somebody else.
[Woman:] For how long, doctor? How long are they going to be sick?
[Doctor:] They'll start getting better soon. Malaria doesn't bother people long if they
get the right kind of treatment. They should be up and around in a few days.
Of course, they'll have to continue treatment.
[Woman:] Is there anything more I can do, Doctor?
[Doctor:] Give them the medicine in the way I told you and keep them as comfortable as you can.
But there's a lot you can do to prevent malaria. The man who can help you do it is
your health officer. Better look him up the first chance you get.
[Narrator:] And a week or so later the health officer comes to the house and tells the farmer
what he can do to protect his family against malaria.
[Health officer:] You've got to screen this porch. And use fine wire so malaria mosquitos
can't get through it. All the windows should be screened. The way to keep malaria out is to
keep mosquitoes out. Every opening big enough to let a mosquito in must be covered or screened.
[Man:] It's kinda hard to put out a lot of money for screens this time of year.
[Health officer:] It doesn't cost a lot of money. It might be a lot to put out at one time, but it only
comes to about three dollars a year. Most of you folks are spending about twenty-five
dollars every year for pill medicines. It's a lot cheaper to buy screens.
[Man:] I guess it is. Still money is right scarce this time of year.
[Health officer:] If you folks are really poor, you might borrow it. You've got to protect your family.
When you get the screening, I'll show you how to put it up and even if the
screening is up you've got a job to do.
You've got to look for mosquitoes in all the dark, cool corners where they hide. Look behind
the bed and in the dark, cool places in the barn.
Wherever there's a dark, cool place, because that's where mosquitoes hide,
and when you find mosquitoes, you've got to swat them or kill them with a spray gun.
[Narrator:] Those are the things you can do to fight malaria to keep yourself and your
family healthy and at work. Keep the mosquitoes out, but there's more to be done.
The mosquitoes must be destroyed. That is your community's job. Malaria mosquitoes lay
their eggs in warm pools and ponds near the banks of quiet lakes, near water plants.
Ponds can be drained so that the mosquitoes will have no place to lay their eggs. Sometimes
ponds can be filled to destroy the breeding places of the malaria mosquito.
These are the larvae or wiggle-tails that hatch out of the malaria mosquito egg.
Brush at the water's edge makes a protective place for the larvae. When the brush is cut away,
this protection is destroyed.
The wiggle-tails live in water until they become full-grown mosquitoes.
Poison dust spread on the water kills the wiggle-tails.
Oils sprayed on the surface of the water kill the wiggle- tails too.
In some places, planes are used to spray water with poison dust. All these things have to
be done by people who know how, people trained to do the work.
It's a big job. It takes a long time and costs a lot of money, but it doesn't cost as much
as malaria costs, and it prevents the sickness and suffering that malaria brings.
The community must get rid of malaria mosquitoes for good with dust and oil, with permanent
draining systems that leave no quiet water in which these mosquitoes can lay their eggs.
But until the community does this, you have a job to do in your home, your church,
your meeting halls. You've got to keep mosquitoes out.
Screen the doors and windows, cover the fireplaces to keep them from coming down through
the chimney. Cover the cracks in the floor. Cover the cracks in the walls and ceiling.
Those things are your job.
If you need help, speak to your health officer. He can tell you how to keep mosquitoes and
malaria out of your house, how to protect your home and family.
Fight malaria so that you can be strong to do the work that must be done.
Strong to live well so that when evening time comes, resting time, you can rest safely.
Remember the mosquito that stands on her head can put you flat on your back.
Ask your health officer for advice. Keep the mosquitoes out. Keep malaria out.
[Organ music]