This rainy season will bring sweet relief to many in Southern Sudan - from the farmers who've just planted this year's crop, to the villagers who've seen their water supply evaporate during the long, harsh dry season. Yet it won't be all good. The rains will almost inevitably bring flooding to huge areas of low-lying Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, creating ideal conditions for diseases like malaria to flourish.

As I drive from the town of Aweil to the smaller outpost of Malualkon, the countryside is barely unrecognizable from a previous trip here after last year's rains. Today, it's dry and dusty as far as the eye can see, unlike last time when the sides of the roads were water-logged and huge pools stood stagnant along most of the 45-minute drive.

I remember pied kingfishers dipping in and out of the water and lush green vegetation dominating the landscape. Yet I also remember the picturesque scenery hiding a host of health problems, including heightened numbers of people suffering from malaria.

"During the rainy season, the number of patients at our clinic will double," says nurse Simon Ngong, who I meet at a health center in Kuom, Aweil. "We'll see a big increase in the cases of malaria, as well as water-borne diseases such as cholera. The flood waters create an ideal breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes and if people drink this water without treating it that will also cause problems."

Hundreds of thousands of people have already returned to this area following the peace agreement of 2005. Many of the most recent returnees are living in temporary housing made from a kind of local grass woven into panels. They don't have plastic sheeting to keep out the rain, let alone insecticide-treated nets to shield themselves from the mosquitoes.

"Another problem is that many people live a long way from a health facility, so they often leave it a long time before coming to seek treatment," says Mark Mulanda, an International Rescue Committee (IRC) health expert in Southern Sudan. "When they do finally seek help, the disease has progressed and is more serious than if it was treated earlier."

Young children are particularly at risk during this time, so Mulanda and his IRC colleagues have trained more than 310 villagers in Northern Bahr el Ghazal state to identify and treat common childhood diseases, including malaria, in youngsters under five. The men and women are provided with a box of drugs so they can treat children at home and for free, any time of the day or night.

"When a child is sick, the mother brings the child to me. I see how the child is doing, what is wrong and then treat the child," says 27-year-old Garang Pioth Garang. "I have been doing this since 2007 and I'm helping the sick children in my village who have malaria, coughs or diarrhea."

Just this month, Garang treated his neighbor's five-year-old son Tong for malaria. His mother admits that before Garang's training, she would have taken Tong to Akuem for treatment, a good 30-minutes drive away and much longer on bicycle or foot.

Trained villagers like Garang will hopefully be able to reduce the numbers of children still dying from malaria - a disease that is both preventable and curable but which kills tens of thousands of African children every year.

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