Malaria Memoirs: My Life Journey as a Public Health Doctor in Tanzania

Zul Premji's passion has been science and its use for the benefit of his fellow citizens. From a background of abject poverty in a village in Tanzania, he rose to become a laboratory technician, a medical doctor, and finally a malaria expert and professor of pathology in a public university. In his practice he observed the clash between tradition and modernization, between "the Ipod and the mullahs." What he discovered is that more important than drugs and vaccines in combating widespread disease is the human spirit. Zul Premji tells his story in all its details?his family life, the obstacles of poverty and inability to afford school fees, the impediments of politics, bureaucracy, and the human ego. "My working life was involved with malaria; it's a political, a social, and an economic as well as scientific disease. There is a very strong public health component of malaria that had a major influence on my life...This is a tale of seemingly impossible quests and grand objectives. It reflects the importance of hard work in one's life coupled with honesty, integrity, and an ethical character. All this might sound boring and I agree, since there were many moments when the Satan in me took over."