Malaria: Eastern DR Congo’s other battle
Malaria: Eastern DR Congo’s other battle Congolese women demanding life-saving mosquito nets On a muddy back street on the outskirts of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 100 women are laying siege - with cheerful determination - to the rickety gates of a small clinic where aid workers are handing out free items. It is a familiar scene in a region still rated one of the poorest, and most dangerous, in the world. But instead of the more familiar search for food, shelter or medicine, the women here - many displaced from their homes by years of conflict - are after nets: cheap, simple, insecticide-soaked, life-saving, mosquito bed nets. "Malaria is the main killer here in Congo, especially for pregnant women and children," says Dr Vincker Lushombo, from Save the Children, watching as each woman's details are recorded, and a net handed over with brief instructions. "But in one badly affected area here, we distributed 10...