Tu Youyou: The Malaria Healer – An Audio Bedtime Story

Tu Youyou: The Scientist Who Saved Millions

👧 A Sick Day and a Big Dream

Hello there! My name is Tu Youyou, and I want to tell you the story of how a girl like me—who once missed school because of illness—grew up to become a scientist and find a cure that saved millions of lives around the world.

When I was a little girl growing up in Ningbo, China, I loved playing outside with my friends. One day, when I was around 12 years old, I got very sick. I had to stay home from school for weeks. It was frustrating, but it also helped me discover something important. As I recovered, I started wondering, “How do doctors know how to make medicine work? Could I learn to help people feel better, too?”

That’s when my dream began.

📚 Following My Curiosity

School became even more exciting for me after that. I loved science — especially the kind that studied plants and how they could be used to help sick people. Did you know that many medicines come from things that grow right in nature?

In the 1950s, not many girls in China became scientists, but I didn’t let that stop me. I worked hard and got accepted to a special science school in Beijing. That’s where I studied pharmacy–the science of making medicine. I enjoyed every minute!

Have you ever wondered how a tiny leaf or flower might hold the secret to curing a big disease? I did, and I was determined to find out.

🦟 Facing a Deadly Enemy

As I got older, I became a researcher. One day, my team was given a mission that was more important than anything we’d ever done before. Our job was to find a cure for malaria.

Malaria is a disease that comes from a certain kind of mosquito bite. At that time, in the 1960s and 1970s, malaria was making millions of people very sick, especially in Asia and Africa—and many of them were children like you.

Nothing was working. The medicine scientists were using wasn’t strong enough. People were suffering every day. The world needed answers fast.

🌿 A Special Secret in an Old Book

Our team searched through hundreds of plants and tested thousands of combinations. It was hard work. Sometimes people got discouraged. But I remembered the herbs and healing methods I had read about during my studies. So I turned to an ancient Chinese medical book written over a thousand years ago.

In this book, I found something interesting: a plant called sweet wormwood (also known as Artemisia annua). It had been used in old times to treat fevers, which are common in malaria.

Could this be the clue we needed?

🧪 Discovery… Then Disappointment

I quickly got to work. Early tests showed promise—we thought we were onto something! But as we kept testing the same method, it stopped working.

What would you do if something you worked so hard on suddenly failed?

I didn’t give up. I stayed up late reading, thinking, trying. Then I noticed something small but powerful: the old recipe said, “Soak the herbs, don’t heat them.” We had been boiling the plant, which destroyed its power.

So, I tried a gentler method. And this time, it worked.

We had created a new medicine made from sweet wormwood. We called it Artemisinin, and it changed everything.

🥼 Brave Trials and Teamwork

Before giving the medicine to patients, we had to be sure it was safe—so my team and I tested it on ourselves first! That’s how much we believed in what we were doing. And it worked—and no one got hurt.

Soon, people with malaria started to get better. Not just a few—thousands. Then millions. Our discovery started saving lives around the world.

Have you ever helped someone and felt that warm, proud feeling inside? That’s how I felt every day.

🏅 A Nobel Surprise

Years later, when I was in my 80s, something amazing happened. In 2015, I received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—one of the biggest awards a scientist can get!

I was the first Chinese woman to win this prize on her own. But to me, the real reward was knowing that children could now grow up healthy instead of being taken by malaria.

🌍 My Advice to Young Scientists

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

• Don’t be afraid of hard problems—be curious about them.
• Look to the past for answers no one else thought to find.
• Never give up, even when it feels like nothing is working.

I started with just a question and a dream. You can start with a question, too. What’s something you want to understand or solve in the world? Could your ideas one day help people feel better, just like mine did?

📚 Keep Exploring!

Like other heroes of history in Rooztag.click, I knew it was my time to act and push boundaries. And like many courageous changemakers, I followed my heart—and the science!

Want to learn more about malaria or the Nobel Prize? Visit this Britannica Kids article about Tu Youyou.

And remember: the next big discovery might come from someone just like you.

So, what do you want to discover? 😊