*****

“The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed yams from Nwakibie was the worst year in living. memory. Nothing happened at its proper time; it was either too early or too late. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. The first rains were late and when they came, lasted only a brief moment …

The drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed. The year had gone mad. When the rains finally returned, they fell as it had never fallen before. Trees were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere.

That year, the harvest was sad, like a funeral and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a tree. branch and hanged himself.

Okonkwo remembered that tragic year with a cold shiver throughout the rest of his life. It always surprised him when he thought about it later that he did not sink under the load of despair. He knew he was a fierce fighter, but that year had been enough to break the heart of a lion.

“Since I survived that year,” he always said, “I shall survive anything.”!”

Extract from Chapter 3, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Indeed we shall look back and say, if we survived 2020, we shall survive anything.

Happy holidays

This is very scarring and calls for immediate action.

Case Report: The First Case of Genotypically Confirmed K13 Propeller Mutation in Sri Lanka and Its Implications on the Elimination Status of Malaria | The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

For anyone interested in malaria, these are some of the papers you should not miss.

1. Parasite population structure and drug resistance surveillance in mainland and Zanzibar

• Describing the current status of Plasmodium falciparum population structure and drug resistance within mainland Tanzania using molecular inversion probes
• A panel of recombinant proteins from human-infective Plasmodium species for serological surveillance
• Falciparum malaria from coastal Tanzania and Zanzibar remains highly connected despite effective control efforts on the archipelago
• NCBI - WWW Error Blocked Diagnostic

2. Country-wide status of hrp2/3 gene deletion in Tanzania.

• Community-based surveys for Plasmodium falciparum pfhrp2 and pfhrp3 gene deletions in selected regions of mainland Tanzania
• NCBI - WWW Error Blocked Diagnostic

Tathmini yangu ya mwaka 2020 yaja!!