Anaemia–What’s that?

 

Rajat: What is that?

Aarti: The doctor said that there is less ‘haemoglobin’ or iron in the blood. The doctor gave some medicines to give me strength. He also said that I should eat jaggery, amla and more green leafy vegetables, because these have iron.

Nancy: How can there be iron in our blood?

 

Jaskirat: There was something about this in the newspaper yesterday.

 

Rajat (laughing) : So then you ate iron or what?!

 

Aarti: Silly! This is not the iron used to make these keys. I don’t know exactly what it was. After I ate a lot of vegetables and whatever the doctor had said, my haemoglobin went up.

 

                                                        

 

 Find out

 

- Ask a doctor or elders about the food items which contain iron

Baby mosquitoes

Jaskirat: There is a poster on malaria just outside our class.

(Everyone goes out to look.)

 

                                                              

Rajat: The poster says something about larvae. What are those?

 

Nancy: They are baby mosquitoes. But they don’t look like mosquitoes at all.

 

Aarti: Where did you see them?

Nancy: There was an old pot lying behind our house. It was full of water for some days. When I looked there I saw some tiny thread-like grey things swimming. I was surprised when Mummy told me that these had come out of the eggs which mosquitoes lay in water. They are called larvae. I also heard something about this on the radio.

Rajat: What did you do?

Nancy: Papa immediately threw away the water. He cleaned and dried the pot and kept it upside down, so that no water would collect.

Jaskirat: Shazia aunty told me that even flies spread diseases, especially stomach problems.

Rajat: But flies don’t bite. Then how do they spread diseases?

                                                                                                         

                                                                 mosquitoes's larvae                                                                         larvae seen through hand lens

  Find out and tell

- Have you seen any poster like this put up anywhere?

- Who do you think puts up such posters, or gives ads in the newspapers?

- What will happen when oil is spread on the water?

 

Make a poster

- In your group, make a poster with a message to keep the cooler, tank, drains and the area clean (wherever water collects). Put up your poster in and around your school.

- Find out who is responsible for keeping the area around your school clean. Write a letter from your class, reporting your findings and suggestions. Find out to whom the letter should be written and to which office it should be sent.

 

Survey report

Some children did this survey. Here are some of their reports.

                                               

 

                                                 

 

 

 

 Tell

 

- Can you see algae in or around the water?

- Where else have you seen algae?

- Are there plants growing on the side or in water? Find out their names. Draw some of these in your note book.

- Do you think these were planted by someone or did they grow on their own?

- What else can you see in water? Make a list.

                                                       

 

In those days, thousands of people used to die from a disease that we now call malaria. The disease was found in areas where there was a lot of rain, or in swampy places. People thought that the illness was caused by some poisonous gas that came from the dirty swampy areas. They gave it the name 'malaria' which means 'bad air'. One doctor had seen tiny germs in the blood of one of the patients, when he observed it under a microscope. But he could not understand how these had got into the patient’s blood.

My professor had some ideas about this. “I think that these may be carried by some kind of mosquito.” As his student, I spent all my time chasing mosquitoes, to catch and observe. We used to carry empty bottles and chase mosquito after mosquito. Then we would put the mosquitoes into a mosquito net in which there was a patient of malaria. The mosquitoes would have a feast, biting these patients. The patients were paid one anna for allowing one mosquitoe to bite them.

I will always remember those days at the hospital in Secundrabad – how we used to cut open the mosquito’s stomach and peep into it. I would spend hours and hours bent over the microscope. By night my neck would be stiff and my eyes could not see clearly! It used to be very hot but we dared not fan ourselves, as all the mosquitoes would fly off in the breeze! Once I also fell ill with malaria.

I spent months like this with the microscope, but could not find anything. One day we caught a few mosquitoes that looked different. They were brownish with spotted wings. When I looked into the stomach of one of the female mosquitoes, I saw something black there. I looked closer. I saw that these tiny germs looked just like the ones that were found in the blood of malaria patients. At last we had the proof! Mosquitoes did spread malaria!”

In December 1902, Ronald Ross got the highest award for his discovery—the Nobel Prize for medicine. In 1905, even as he lay dying, Ross’s last words were, “I will find something, I will find something new.”