LAMBARENE, Gabon -- A child died of malaria at the Schweitzer Hospital one recent night, but there were no heroic measures.
For most of the staff, it was tragically familiar.
Summoned to the pediatric ward, Dr. Daniela Schmid arrived as a young mother stood next to the body of her toddler. He had died, it seems, of acute anemia. Malaria parasites had destroyed so much of his blood that it couldn't carry enough oxygen to keep him alive.
His mother was silent. Nurses paused in their rounds. Patients' families, who typically stay with sick relatives, stood quietly in the echoing corridor. By sunrise, the woman had gone -- taking her child's body back to their village.
For Schmid, an Austrian who came to Africa a few months ago to help complete her medical training, it was the first time she had seen a child die.
"It was strange -- for me," she recalls, rubbing a tear from the corner of her eye. It will soon become far too familiar.
In Europe and the United States the disease is considered a relic. It was brought under control 50 years ago through public health measures and by intensive spraying of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carry the parasite, a single-celled protozoa.
But malaria still kills between 1.5 million and 2.7 million people each year. It's the world's third biggest killer among infectious diseases -- though spending on treatment and research averages only $65 for each person who dies. That compares with $3,274 spent for each person who dies of AIDS.
About 90 percent of those deaths occur here, in sub-Saharan Africa. Most victims are infants and pregnant women. In some villages, it claims four out of 10 children before their fifth birthdays. Those who survive suffer repeated bouts of infection.
"If you go to any school and test the children, you will find 50 percent or more" carry the parasite in their blood, says Dr. Peter Kremsner, head of infectious diseases at Schweitzer. At one area school, his staff found 90 percent of the students infected.
Every day, about two dozen sick children and their parents cram the hot waiting room at the hospital's research laboratory. Sweating, listless and glassy-eyed, the young patients lie limply in their mothers' arms.
Young researchers take a drop of blood, smear it on a slide, stain it and check it under the microscope. Sometimes, parasites cover the microscope's field of view like wallpaper.
