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Pearl Gan
Photographer Pearl Gan led the project in collaboration with Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (part of Oxford Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health) and Eijkman Oxford Clinical Research Unit, Indonesia.
The project aims to bring visibility to the people and their malaria burden through photographs of them and their environment. Pearl hopes to humanise the faces of malaria and the malaria problem in the Asia-Pacific to audiences unfamiliar with it.
Image descriptions (from top left to top right, bottom left to bottom right)
- Four-year-old Kristofer Kafeiki at play near his home at the isolated village of Takpala on the island of Alor in the Lesser Sundas Archipelago of southeastern Indonesia. Kristofer’s parents make due on only a few dollars daily income. They live in poverty and malnourished Kristofer is exposed to repeated attacks of malaria and other endemic infections. These attacks and his parents’ ability to obtain good healthcare when they occur threatens Kristopher’s survival and his development into a healthy adult.
- A mobile malaria worker for Brac's Malaria Team is conducting a blood test for a villager at the Bandarban Track in Bangladesh.
- Eight-year-old Hua Song lives at remote Phong Ngangao in malarious western Cambodia. He is at home suffering an acute attack of malaria. His parents will exhaust local means of his recovery before seeking out medical care, including drugs from unlicensed or regulated vendors and traditional herbal remedies. Getting him to hospital represents a last resort of great economic impact on the family, even if the care he receives is free of cost.
- Blood films stained with Giemsa at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit at Mae Sot, western Thailand. The sophisticated bar code label and digital surveillance system reliably tracks the many hundreds of patients screened each month at this centre. Such capacity is extremely rare across the Asia-Pacific, with pencil and paper recording being typical.
- Dr Sayeduzzaman getting a rapid diagnostic test by the malaria mobile staff from Brac, Bangladesh.
- A pregnant Uzma Gull sits on a bed at home outfitted with a mosquito net supplied to pregnant women by the Antenatal Care Centre of MCH Abakhail at Nowshera, Kyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Northern Pakistan.
- Twenty-eight-year-old Malinda is hospitalized with an acute attack of malaria at the Mebung Primary Healthcare Centre on Alor Island in southeastern Indonesia. Her mother, fanning her, demanded they go to hospital after she spiked a fever over 40C. Malinda’s malaria arrested the many important routines and duties of both mother and her adult child.
Photographer's contact details
Website : www.pearlgan.com
Email : emailpearly@gmail.com