I discovered @air-clinic last week and I was so excited because I wanted so bad a health-related community on the steemit blockchain.I spent almost a year on steemit, I met great scientists/mentors here and they help me a lot (God bless them), still having the opportunity to write things you really understand with people who do care and get paid for it! Come on! Who doesn't want that?

This is my first post, so I will present myself quickly:

I'm Fancybrothers (And yes I intend to keep it anonymous :p ), I've spent 5 years as a medical student in Tunisia and I'm currently working as an intern (Tunisia is a small country in North Africa).I speak English, French, Arabic and some Deutsch.i'm glad to be among you all ^^.

Now to my story!

Tunisia is endemic for leishmaniasis.The disease is transmitted through a small mosquito called 'Phlebotomus'.The incidence of the disease is the highest in the middle of the country, I personally live in the north so we would have few cases per year and the disease wasn't really a concern...

Phlebotomus (Source: Public Health Image Library)

One summer I was invited to a health camp in the middle of the country.I was still a med student back then so all I had to do is run some simple tests. We had doctors with us who explained to us each different case, we really had fun and had that feeling of fulfillment! Everything was great!

I can recall that we saw so many people suffering from leishmaniasis. We weren't really worried knowing that the disease is treatable, in fact, we were very excited until we saw this very young girl, she had a lesion on her face, a big scary one! She was screaming: I'm ugly, my face is ruined forever ! and then she burst into tears, she kept repeating it over and over.It was really an unpleasant experience.

After many attempts, we succeeded in calming her but I had this bad feeling in my heart for some reason.Later, I hear a screaming outside, it was loud! I hurried to see what was going on and it was one of the most shocking moments in my entire life.I saw a mother carrying her child and she seems like she was having an emotional outbreak. Her child was dead, he was so young and so beautiful, it made me cry like a baby. I knew I wasn't supposed to do so but I cried anyway, I cried like I never cried in my entire life.

We discovered later that the child had a fever in the past couple of weeks, his parents ignored that and decided to give him antibiotics blindly.He had visceral leishmaniasis (Black fever), one of the most aggressive forms.Later the authority informed us that there was this mosquitoes outbreak because they didn't use pesticides that year.They informed the habitants to take precautions but most of them didn't.

End of story

Word count: 350

I showed you a glimpse of a real problem in my country and we are not even close...Some African countries have thousands of deaths and sorrow each year because uncontrolled mosquitos, they are the most dangerous animals in the world because they transmit so many diseases and probably the most disturbing one is Malaria.

Encouraging African governments to fight this problem is now a necessity and raising individual awareness is even more important, here's some valuable advice:

Mosquitos are more active in the night, so make sure to keep your windows closed.
Wear long-sleeved clothes when you are outdoors especially at night or in the early morning.
Wear always mosquito repellant on the uncovered areas.
Don't let any water stand near you, these are the best mosquito breeding sites.If you happen to be near one, change the place
Finally if you intend to visit an endemic area, visit a doctor to take the necessary precautions before you do.

Thank you very much and I wish you a great day :)

This is an entry for the 22st Edition of the #AIR-CLINIC Writing Contest.

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