What if ... malaria reaches America?

I wonder how many of you have caught the snippet of health news from Asia … the emergence of a lethal strain of malaria that is resistant to current treatments. 

I knew it was there in Cambodia, in a remote corner of the country on the border with Vietnam. Apparently it has now spread to Thailand and Vietnam - and so, potentially, into the ‘mainstream’ malarial areas. There has been a drive to eradicate malaria from the Mekong delta (using preventive measures such as bednets and sprays, plus experimenting with vaccines), but if this strain reaches the Mekong all those efforts will be undone.

The biggest worry is that it will spread to Africa - virulent strains already kill thousands every year, where treatment depends on proximity to a health centre and preventive measures are hit and miss.

I know that in Malawi everyone is given bednets in an effort to control the disease, but many find them unbearably hot to sleep under, and fishermen find the small mesh invaluable for trapping small fish. I visited a school and saw bednets full of holes. When I mentioned malaria people simply shrugged: it was just one more hazard of living in Africa.

But a lethal strain is more than one more hazard. It can easily spread far more widely than ebola or the Zika virus and kill more than thousands.

So, will there be panic in the western press? Not at the moment. After all, it is contained in areas that tourists and western businesspeople rarely visit. And our climate ensures that anyone returning from a malarial area cannot bring the virus home with them … so we've got nothing to worry about, have we?

But just suppose it reached, say, the industrialised parts of India which are building trade links with the west? What would we do then? How many businesspeople would happily wander around in an area knowing the local mosquitoes carried a strain of malaria that might kill them? What will happen to post- Brexit trade then? 

What if one stray mosquito found its way to the swamps of Florida? 

Oh the drug companies would swing into action then. Millions of dollars would be ploughed into research. More millions would be invested in education and preventive measures across the world.

Maybe malaria has to reach America before those deaths in Africa and Asia are taken seriously.

Can anyone define 'home' for me, please?

What do you mean by 'home'?

I've been pondering this recently - in the context of moving home. I'm having to keep my house unnaturally clean and tidy, just in case I have a viewing at short notice. I look at books and pictures in a different light, now I know I won't have room for them all in my new flat. But a home is much more than clean floors, or books and pictures. For me, it's the place where I can be who I need to be at any given moment. I can be cheerful or crabby or knackered and it's all fine. 

But that's now. When I had small children - home was the place where we lived as a family. It was the container of family life, and my role was to support the fabric of the family in such a way that the children could be cheerful or crabby or knackered at it was all fine. And part of that was providing a building of some sort where we could be safe and warm and secure. These days I live alone. And so 'home' can no longer be defined by family living in it. But it still has a meaning for me in terms of being a refuge from the hurly burly of life outside.

Does 'home' include community? Does it encompass neighbours, villages, towns, cities? Here in the U.K. we shut our front doors behind us. In many developing countries villages people spend most of their time in communal living spaces. Does that impact on their idea of 'home'? Or is the construct meaningless if it's a place where you live all the time, not somewhere you leave and come back to front time to time?

As you know I travel, sometimes for up to six weeks at a time. A few years ago I left for twelve months. So where is 'home' when I'm away for so long? Hotel rooms? If I simply need a place where I can shut the door and be whoever, then some hotel rooms certainly feel like a home. I don't need luxury, but I do need somewhere safe and clean. And I need to know it's there - the anxiety of arriving in a town not knowing where I'm going to sleep defeats me these days. Does this imply that I could include the security of knowing where I'll be spending the night in my definition of 'home'?

Which leads me to speculate on our definition of 'homeless'. On a practical level we think of those who must sleep on the streets as simply having nowhere safe to spend the night. But I think it's much more complicated than that. 'Homes' are not just bricks and mortar. They include an element of predictability and security, a concept of being accepted for who we are.

I'm not quite sure where this thinking is leading. I feel as if I'm scrabbling for a definition but it's too elusive, or too deconstructed, to be really helpful. Maybe you have some better ideas.