BootsnAll Travel Community

1. Cover yourself from dusk til dawn
2. Use malaria-profylaxis if in a highrisk-area
3. If fever developes, search medical attention !!
Cerebral malaria can kill you in a few days!!

I´m a medical student, so I think I know what I´m talking about. There are, as you maybe already knew, different types of malaria. They all belong to the plasmodium-kind of parasites, but the most dangerous kind is Plasmodium FALCIPARUM.
This is what gives you cerebral malaria, if you´re unlucky. The others doesn´t go with such a heavy parasitic load in the blood, and doesn´t cause any deaths.

Depending on which drug most widely used, RESISTANCE to that drug will eventually appear. This means that falciparum-malaria might be sensitive against Lariam in one area, but resistant in another.
To know which medication to use, I can recommend the WHO homepage. Always up to date when it comes to these topics. Here you can also check for any other risks in a chosen area:

WHO Homepage - Malaria

SIDE-EFFECTS are as you all say rather common with this kind of medication.

Lariam / Mefloquine is the most potent drug, but also the one with most side-effects. Common ones are strange dreams ( I kept dreaming that my thumb got cut off...). In some cases anxciety develops.

Malarone is the drug of choice if you can´t take Lariam by some reason. This is a new drug, very effective, but also very expensive. I´m gonna try it when I go to Tanzania after Christmas.

Chloroquine was the first drug on the market. It´s cheap, common side-effects are stomach-related ones. Children are more sensitive to it than grown ups. But that doesn´t say ANYTHING about the drugs toxicity. Children get irreversibel liverdamage if they eat aspirin. They are simply not as developed as grown ups!!!Initially all malaria was sensitive to chloroquine, but because of it´s wide usage, today almost all malaria is resistant to it.

Paludrine is a combination-drug, that is used together with Chloroquine. They potentiate each other. Works well in some areas. Rather non-toxic.

Quinine / Quinidine is the golden standard among TREATMENT used today, and recommended as such by WHO.

If Malaria is diagnosed in an early stage, prognosis is very good. Some of my friends who choose not to take profylaxis, always bring some Lariam with them. When they get fever they take 3 pills, and then seek medical attention. One of my friend got sick when he had returned from Africa to Sweden. He had falciparum-malaria, but was cured.

Hope this is helping some in there malaria-worries!

Regards,
truetraveller

[This message was edited by Truetraveller on 10 December 2002 at 03:11.]

Hi
I am sure your post will really help. In fact, perhaps, we can you resolve all our queries on health while travelling.

Try me...

Seems like Doxycycline been mentioned in posts before but there's been no confirmation that it does work as well as Mefloquine etc. Its mostly mentioned as an alternative for MEF in MEF resistant areas (ex. border areas of Thailand).

I do know some side effects of DOX are
-increased photo sensitivity(wear sunglasses, sunscreen)
-nauseous feeling (reduced if pill taken with food)

Veena