Fact: Malaria in pregnancy causes 200,000 stillbirths per year in Africa

A poem for Global Health Week

Fact:
Malaria in pregnancy causes 200,000 stillbirths per year in Africa 
 

 
As the shadow attaches to her toes
so the mother slings the still
born over her shoulder until night
when her birthed treasure is buried
with the others under the blankets.
At cock’s crow she presses the pink
of his unformed lips to her breast.
Soon the dead will have another
Birthday, and she will tell him stories.
 
 

Cameron Conaway
From “Malaria Poems” (Michigan State University Press, 2014)
 
 

Cameron Conaway is an adjunct professor in the Professional Communication Program at the University of California-San Francisco. He was the first poet-in-residence at Bangkok’s Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU).