“Jab machhar sab khoon pi lela, jab beemari ho jala, tab dawai chidki ka baa? [What is the use of spraying insecticide after the mosquitoes are done feeding on our blood and giving us the disease?].” Eighteen-year-old Seeta Devi’s voice cuts through the heat, as she talks from the doorway of her hut on a baking-hot day in April. Her mother-in-law Gulabi Devi, 60, and sister-in-law Sonu Devi, 34, are battling high fever, chills and severe body aches that have lasted for over a fortnight.
Seeta Devi’s village Sendur is 64 km away from Robertsganj, the headquarters of Sonbhadra district in south-eastern Uttar Pradesh. There is no public transport connecting these hamlets, often forcing the residents to walk anywhere between 6-12 km to reach the main road where the bus service runs. The term ‘jada-wala-bukhar’--fever with chills--is the common reference to malaria in this isolated hamlet and associated with the rains, but malaria is no more a monsoon disease.
