Investigative journalist Sonia Shah will discuss the science and politics of malaria at Wartburg College Tuesday, Sept. 25. 

Shah, author of “The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years,” will speak at 11:30 a.m. in Neumann Auditorium. A panel discussion about the worldwide impact of the disease will precede her address at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 24, in McCaskey Lyceum in Saemann Student Center.

The events will launch Wartburg’s yearlong focus on eradicating malaria, part of a nationwide campaign undertaken by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Wartburg is affiliated with the ELCA, which has given the college a grant to assist in the effort.

The public is invited to both events, which are free of charge.

Shah, who was born in New York City, the daughter of parents who had practiced medicine in India, has been critically acclaimed for her books on medical issues. The New York Times called “Fever,” published in 2010, a “tour-de-force history” and Time magazine described it as “often a rollicking read.”

She spent five years researching the book, including time in Cameroon, Malawi, Panama and elsewhere.

Her prior work, “The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients” in 2006, was called “an act of courage” by best-selling novelist John Le Carré and “important and powerful” by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Shah also wrote “Crude: The Story of Oil” in 2004. 

The panel discussion is aimed at providing information about the extent of the malaria epidemic. The speakers will include:

• Abhay Nadipuram, a 2010 Wartburg graduate and current University of Iowa law school student. He used a Davis Projects for Peace grant in 2009 to help fight malaria in Guyana, South America, by providing rural residents with netting to protect them from mosquitoes while sleeping.
• Jessica Nipp Hacker, a 1998 graduate who is coordinating the ELCA anti-malaria campaign.
• Kelsey Nulph, a junior from Batavia, Ill., who is leading the Wartburg effort.
• Dr. Delford Doherty, a 1998 graduate, who has a master’s degree in public health and a doctorate in pharmacy. He suffered from malaria several times while growing up in Sierra Leone, Africa.

More information about the Wartburg Malaria Initiative is at www.wartburg.edu/malaria.

Sonia Shah photo by Joyce Ravid.