By the time Fenny was 10 years old, she had come close to death more than once.

One time, she thought her time had really come.

She was feverish, shivering and too weak to walk. “I was very sick,” Fenny (pictured above) says. “That’s when mummy carried me to the ChildFund office to get tested.”

A trained ChildFund Zambia volunteer diagnosed Fenny with malaria and referred her to the local health clinic for urgent treatment. This story details her experience with malaria, how she was nursed back to health, and the life-saving power of a single net.

Malaria and a brush with death

On the way to the clinic, it started pouring down with rain, and Fenny started to lose hope.

“We got soaked,” Fenny says. “I thought then that my time had come to die, but mummy said whether we are soaked or not, we are going to the clinic.”

Upon seeing Fenny’s condition, the long line of people waiting at the clinic let Fenny and her mother Gertrude pass.

Fenny was given anti-malarial medication and after days of rest, she eventually recovered.

“It was a day I’ll never forget,” Fenny, now 12, says. “I thought the time had come for me to die, but within the shortest period of time I was back to normal.”

A deadly disease

Gertrude says her whole family, including Fenny – the second youngest of six children – suffered from malaria multiple times a year.

Their home in rural Zambia is close to a small river and surrounded by wild grassland, a prime breeding ground for malaria-infected mosquitoes, especially during the wet season.

There is nowhere else for the family to go; they have lived here for most of their lives and rely on a small piece of land nearby where they grow vegetables such as tomatoes and okra to earn an income.