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Wintercoth has had malaria lots of times as a little kid, a teenager, as an adult,

but there was one time that was particularly memorable.

She was in primary school and had just moved from Nairobi to somewhere a lot more rural,

a village outside of Kassumu.

So that's in the western part of Kenya along the Lake Victoria shores.

It's a region with one of the highest rates of malaria in all of Kenya, and it didn't take long for her to get it.

I remember being really, really sick.

And for me initially at that time I had no idea that it was malaria.

My grandmother should find a way of trying to just relieve the symptoms.

So she would boil like some leaves, and then I would drink it just to relieve the headache,

like some of the symptoms, like severe headache, chills, like if you have the chills.

And when you're vomiting and you're just so sick and you lose your sense of taste.

Winter was lucky. She survived, but lots of kids don't.

Globally, a child under the age of five dies from malaria just about every two minutes.

But even for the kids who do survive, kids like winter, there can be long-term complications,

things like permanent damage to the immune system and kidneys, cognitive impairment.

And in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, many kids will be infected multiple times in the same year,

which means they miss a lot of school and often fall behind.

Winter says that is awful as that is for most kids in Kenya.

Malaria is just a normal part of growing up.

Definitely there's no single child in Kenya who has never gotten malaria or infected by malaria.

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