As Climate Changes, Malaria Rises In Africa - In Altitude

The soft cries of children broke the morning stillness as parents brought them in to the hillside hospital one by one - feverish, racked by chills, drained by a disease once unknown in the high country of Kenya.

Just outside town later this day, scientist James Mutunga scooped water from an irrigation ditch, poured it into a plastic basin, and leaned down with a practiced eye.

"See, here, there's a larva. This one's about a day old," he said, scanning the murk for tiny, newly hatched "anopheles arabiensis," a malaria-bearing mosquito rarely found in Kenya's uplands.

Last year Mutunga's team detected them nearby at an altitude of 6,243 feet. "That's the highest ever in Kenya," the young entomologist said.

from the AP via the Hartford Courant