Glaxo inherited Malarone when it took over Wellcome. Too expensive to put into commercial production, the company determined to offer it free to Kenya. But it was not as simple as that. David Pilling reports. A child-size mound draped in a dirty blanket lies motionless on a broken metal bed.
Flies circle around one end of the heap.
A tiny foot protrudes from the other. The body appears to have been abandoned. Nobody, not a nurse nor a relative nor a friend, is in attendance. The pathetic mound is another statistic, one more victim of the mosquito-borne disease that is ravaging East Africa. Yet suddenly, miraculously, the blanket twitches into life.