When Annah Kadhenghi had her first child last year, she named him Brighton Ushindi Baraka: baraka meaning “blessing” in Swahili, ushindi meaning victory. Last month, at the age of seven months, Brighton fought his first battle against an enemy that plagues millions of the world’s poorest: malaria.
“His temperature was very high; he was vomiting. I took him to the hospital,” says Kadhenghi, a schoolteacher in Kilifi, eastern Kenya. Brighton defeated the mosquito-borne disease, and now sits contentedly at the weigh-in clinic at Kilifi county hospital.
