A Sharp Pain Suddenly Went Through His Arm

It is a green tree with the big branches. Vinod was climbing that tree. A sharp pain suddenly went through his arm, then another and another. He had put his foot on a wasps' nest and they were after him. With a yell he jumped to the ground. With tears running down his face, he ran to his mother. She knew what to do. Soon the burning pain got less and Vinod smiled again. `I hate wasps.' He said, `and I do not like pain.'

Nobody likes pain. Yet pain helps to keep us safe from harm. If Vinod had not felt pain he would not have known when the wasps stung him. Other wasps would have stung him on the neck, face and legs. Each sting would have added more poison to his body. Son he would have felt and would have fallen from the tree. The first feelings of pain were actually a safety signal to Vinod.

Think what would happen to your feet if you felt no pain. You would walk in your bare feet. Instead of stepping carefully when you came to sharp stones and broken glass you would across them because you would feel no pain. Soon the soles of your feet would be covered with cuts.

Let's take another example. It is lunchtime and mother has just given you some hot soup. You sip it slowly from your spoon because you known that hot burn your mouth. If you did not feel the pain you would swallow mouthful after mouthful. This would burn the inside of your mouth, your throat and your stomach. Without pain you would be in danger every time you sat down to a meal.

So you see pain helps to protect us from the dangers of stings, cuts and heat.

• Wasps: a stinging insect (like bee) which is black and yellow in color.
• The bites of some other insects are very harmful and may even be fatal.
• Vectors are organisms which carry germs from sources of infection without themselves being infected. For example it a mosquito sucks the blood of a person who has malaria; the germs will enter its body and be carried into the bloodstream of the next person it bites. However, all mosquitoes do not carry malaria. It is the female anopheles mosquito that carries malaria, while Aedes mosquitoes transmit dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever, and the culex mosquito carries filarial.