Malaria anyone?

The site of Fiona tut-tutting on the 10 o'clock news is bad enough at the best of times but over swine flu - 2,000 suspected cases globally, 5 on our shores, 7 dead in Mexico, 1 (child) in the US - is off the scale. Three million or so people, many of them children, most of them far from airports and cameras, die every year from malaria - oh yes, and with climate change we can expect that one (and others) to spread. We even went as a family into a malarial area on holiday in East Africa last year, shock horror! We can't give malaria to each other directly, mosquitoes are the vector, but we can get a mild form of flu from another human - oh dear, let's wheel out "pandemic" and watch the stock market shudder. It's not as if the world is short of bad news stories, some even related to preventable diseases.....Desperate Housewives saves me from further fury tonight!

A thought before leaving the office to watch football training and prepare for the big match.....