Thought this might be of interest to lads heading this side of the pond and who might have some questions about malaria.
A client’s girlfriend picked up malaria 2 years back while they were on a safari in Zululand with me. Her doctors in NY did not know what the problem was and the lass was in a bad way. My client phoned me in a panic and I figured it for malaria and suggested he get in touch with the nearest tropical disease centre and all went well thereafter.
This was nearly 3 months after the safari.
A good reference book on the parasite and its variations is “A laymans Guide to Malaria†– Martine Maurel ISBN 1-86872-647-0.
It is a small paperback which will make good reading on the plane.

Well , here I have too throw inmt two cents worth.

A couple of years ago the wife, a couple of friend and I went on a trip to the Northern Kruger area, specidfically a small reserve by name of Makuye.

15 people went, and she used two types of prohphylactics, repellent out of the yazoo and mosquito nets, 12 days later she started to get sick, I said Malaria and she went to our GP, said GP tested for Malaria, which cmae back negative and GP contimued too treat for tick bite fever, next day she was even sicker than before,went back and GP gave more meds for tick bite fever, day trhee and she was very bad , I took her to GP, I insisted on another Malaria test which was refused asit was tick bite fever ? and that the test came back negative.

Day 4 wife was so sick she could not even get up, Day 5 she woke up and told me she was dying, her nails were turing blue, and she was going down fast, I rushed her to GP in close proximity who gave her one look and said that too hget my ass in gear and too hospital as she was not ging too make it.

Hospital tested immediately for Malaria amd meningitis. Malaria came back positive !!!!

By 6 o clock that night she was on respirator and by 8 o clock the sepcialists sais she will not survive the night, that night she went inot coma, which laste dfor 59 days !!!!!!!

She died 3 times on us, came back and fought it through, kidneys failed , lungs collapsed, all the shit no tells you about.

She went in weiging 69 kg's, came back after 59 days weighing 37 kg's had too spend two months in physical therapy to learn too walk talk and do all notrmal things again.

Whilst in coma I checked the bloo test rport done on the first day !!

I stated " if first test is negative, it should not be taken as indicative that malaria is not prevalent, test should at least be doen three times too be conclusive "

Moral of my experience, if you have been too malaria area, test and test again, if stillsick, convice your gp too start treatinh for malaria, our specialist claimed if treatment was started on first day, and it was not malaria, nothing couls have happened from the preventative treatment but she could have been spared this nightamare

Oh yeah thank god for medical, a bill of 1.25 mil ZAR was picked up in full by insurance

.

My cousin came back to the US after two years in Zaire. ONe day she got sick, really sick. SHe told me she had malaria, she knew the symptoms since she'd seen it many times before. Her doctor in Minnesota told her she had the flu. A couple days later she went back with temps over 104 and told the DR loudly she had MALARIA! We took her to the hospital. SHe was diagnosed with malaria, of course. I wonder what would have happened to her if she wasn't as insistant as she was. FOllowing is an article from FOX NEWS on spraying DDT.

DDT: A Weapon of Mass Survival

Thursday , May 04, 2006

By Steven Milloy

The U.S. Government has finally begun to reverse policy on the insecticide DDT. Let’s hope that this policy shift represents the beginning of the end of what can only be called a crime against humanity: the decades-old withholding of the world’s most effective anti-malarial weapon from billions of adults and children at risk of dying from the disease.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) told the Washington Times this week (May 3) that it endorses and will fund the indoor spraying of DDT in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria kills more than one million Africans annually, mostly children under five and pregnant women.

Malaria accounts for 10 percent of Africa’s disease burden and causes $12 billion yearly in lost productivity.

USAID reportedly will use about 20 percent of its $99 billion budget to fund indoor spraying with DDT, according to the Times. “Between 1 million and 1.5 million people will be protected,†a USAID official told the Times.

There are, of course, many more millions of Africans that need protection from the mosquitoes that transmit the parasite that causes malaria, but USAID’s announcement represents a ray of hope compared to its previous policy which – as characterized by Robert S. Desowitz’s book entitled, Malaria Capers (Norton, 1992) – appeared to be that people in Third World malarial regions were “better dead than alive and riotously reproducing.â€

The policy change is timely given a recent commentary published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet (April 25) in which a number of researchers accuse the World Bank of deception and medical malpractice in the struggle against malaria.

The researchers charge that the World Bank reneged on its promise to spend $300 million to $500 million for malaria control in Africa; concealed the actual amount of its expenditures; reduced its staff of malaria experts from seven to zero shortly after promising to do more to fight the disease; published false epidemiological studies to exaggerate the performance of its projects; and funded clinically obsolete treatments, against the World Health Organization’s advice, for malaria in India.

Given that the World Bank’s defense amounted to “we are committed to learning from our shortcomings,†it seems clear that Africans would be better off with an effective anti-malarial tool like DDT, rather than the efforts of pathetically ineffective bureaucrats.

Roadblocks to the lifesaving use of DDT remain – mostly in the form of the modern environmental movement and its governmental subsidiary known as the European Union.

“Environmentalists are calling for the elimination of the toxic chemical, DDT, which is still used in large parts of Africa to combat malaria,†the Voice of America reported this week.

The EU recently put this policy into practice, for example, by threatening to impose a ban on agricultural exports from Uganda if that nation proceeded with its plan for indoor spraying of DDT, according to Paul Driessen, senior fellow at the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

“If the strict controls that should be put in place when DDT is used are not fully adhered to, and there is a risk of contamination of the food chain, [it] would not automatically lead to a ban of food products, but it will mean that that particular consignment cannot be sent to Europe,†said Tom Vens, an EU official in Uganda.

The Ugandans countered by maintaining that “DDT is not harmful to humans and if used for indoor-insecticide spraying, it’s the most effective and cheapest way to fight malaria,†according to Driessen.

The Ugandans have it right.

There never was any scientific evidence that DDT posed a risk to humans or wildlife. An EPA administrative law judge said as much after seven months and 9,000 pages of testimony about DDT in 1972. DDT wasn’t responsible for the decline in bald eagle populations, didn’t cause bird egg shell-thinning and didn’t cause cancer in humans, the judge determined.

DDT was nonethless banned in the U.S. when then-EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus reversed without explanation the decision of the judge who actually heard all the DDT testimony – Ruckleshaus heard none of it and never read any of the transcript. As it was later revealed, Ruckleshaus was a member of the Audubon Society and raised money for the Environmental Defense Fund – the two activist groups that led the charge for the DDT ban.

The fix was in for DDT, as environmental activists subsequently exported the ban to the rest of the world – with horrific consequences, including tens of millions killed and billions made ill by malaria over time.

It’s time for the malaria tragedy to end. A documentary by producer D. Rutledge Taylor, MD entitled, “3 Billion and Counting†– which will take “an in-depth look at the disease that has killed more people than any disease ever known†– is in the works and will be released later this year.

Let’s forget the myths about DDT – it’s time to stop malaria now.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, an advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

DDT
or 2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)-1,1,1,-trichloroethane, chlorinated hydrocarbon compound used as an insecticide. First introduced during the 1940s, it killed insects that spread disease and feed on crops. Swiss scientist Paul Müller was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering (1939) DDT's insecticidal properties. DDT, however, is toxic to many animals, including humans, and it is not easily degraded into nonpoisonous substances and can remain in the environment and the food chain for prolonged periods. By the 1960s its harmful effects on the reproductive systems of fish and birds were apparent in the United States, where the insecticide had been heavily used for agricultural purposes. After the United States banned its use in 1972, the wildlife population returned, particularly the bald eagle and the osprey. Nevertheless, DDT use continues in parts of the world, particularly in tropical regions, to control the mosquitoes that spread malaria. In 2001 the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants called for the phasing out of DDT once a cost-effective alternative becomes available.

I've got to say, I don't know how good they are, but must ask why more people esp those in the safari business don't carry any of those testing kits. (Perhaps Alf can advise on their effectiveness)

We always keep a few in our extensive first aid kit along with malaria and other treatments and my better half who is (or actually was) a cardio thoracic theatre nurse (with additional tropical medicine experience and qualifications) is always there to keep an eye on things....

DDT was used in the US extensively before it was banned. And now that's it has stopped I believe we have fully recovered from it's use.

Perhaps that was the real lesson.

The Big Guy:

I have always felt that Rachel Carson ("Silent Spring") had much to answer for. I recall reading some years ago that intensive use of DDT in Central America was bringing malaria to near eradication. Then the DDT stopped and malaria carrying mosquitoes recovered very nicely, thank you.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by nelsonted1:
DDT: A Weapon of Mass Survival

Thursday , May 04, 2006

By Steven Milloy

The U.S. Government has finally begun to reverse policy on the insecticide DDT. Let’s hope that this policy shift represents the ..........


How sad for reality. This "Steven Milloy" is a hack! He, like others of his ilk, pull obscure information from illegitimate sources to create "data" that sounds logical - certainly appeals to the uneducated - and destroys access to man's and the Earth's actual betterment. Please, folks......don't trust "popular" sources of scientific information.
Alex Diner
Ph.D. Pesticide Physiology, Auburn, '79
Research Scientist (retired) U.S.D.A. Forest Service

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gerrys375:
The Big Guy:

I have always felt that Rachel Carson ("Silent Spring") had much to answer for. ...........

Rachel Carson had NOTHING to answer for!!! She was totally correct. OF COURSE, the malaria mosquito returned!!! DDT is eliminated; the bug's remaining population reproduces to result in large numbers; the bug sucks the parasite from an earlier-infected population of hosts; the bug transmits the parasite to new hosts. It's THAT simple!!! Believe me!!!...... Rachel Carson was enlightened beyond the world's ability to comprehend. I suggest that YOU try a little "comprehension".
Alex Diner
Ph.D. Pesticide Physiology
Research Scientist (retired) U.S.D.A. Forest Service

DDT is the perfect example of effete liberal western ecologists putting the possibility of a few animals stressed over multi-millions of maimed and dead PEOPLE.

What is "black water fever"? Seems like I read it describes coagulated blood in the urine associated with malaria.

Conifer:

I was more interested in your "signature" than in the substance of your reply to my post. You are a "PH.D in Pest Physiology"? And you were a "Research Scientist for the US Forestry Service"? (BTW, I lived in Panama and saw more malaria than I would imagine you ever saw -besides that lab Anopheles mosquito in that school that allegedly gave you a "PH.D in Pest Physiology")

You were in the US Forestry Service? I heard years ago that many of the bunny huggers and tree huggers were deliberately infiltrating the US Forestry Service. You sound like a perfect example. (A PH.D and you worked for a Federal agency? Don't make me laugh) You never saw malaria in the American tropics. It is astonishing how stupid you liberal types are -to post on a website where people have either seen malaria victims or have experienced it themselves. Do you prefer to save the birds or human beings? Apparently you go with Rachel Carson. UNLESS, of course, you have a cure for malaria that does not involve DDT?

TSK!......it's too bad you are undegoing such an unhappy childhood. Good-bye.

It's funny how westerners foam at the mouth over Aids which is a plague but are oh-so dismissive of malaria, a worse plague since most of the victims get it through no fault of their own . I guess Stalin's quote “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.†is apt, isn't it?

quote:

Originally posted by fla3006:
What is "black water fever"? Seems like I read it describes coagulated blood in the urine associated with malaria.

I'm no fundi, but I believe it's a late stage of the malaria cycle and is so called because your passing a lot of blood in your urine.......about the next stage is kicking the bucket.........

quote:

Originally posted by nelsonted1:
My cousin came back to the US after two years in Zaire. ONe day she got sick, really sick. SHe told me she had malaria, she knew the symptoms since she'd seen it many times before. Her doctor in Minnesota told her she had the flu. A couple days later she went back with temps over 104 and told the DR loudly she had MALARIA! We took her to the hospital. SHe was diagnosed with malaria, of course. I wonder what would have happened to her if she wasn't as insistant as she was. FOllowing is an article from FOX NEWS on spraying DDT.

quote:

I certainly could be wrong, not knowing you personally, but I'd bet my next retirement check, that you have never shot anything bigger that a Kentucky whitetail, or any rifle bigger that 30-06.... Well maybe a 45-70 lever gun! MacD37

I should have taken that bet but I can't take food out of his mouth.

What does the second quote,in your signature line, have to do with Malaria??????????????????
I will say that quote seems to have hit a nerve, for you to add it to your signature line! I remember writing it, but I don't remember where, or in what context!

In the second quote,your cousin haveing Malaria is relevent to the string. But if your cousin being in Zaire has anything to do with your shooting dangerous game, I'd like to hear how it connects,with my quote above, or with this string!

However, I'd ask you not to side track this very important string, but start a new string, if you want to take this further, public, or private! I ain't scared of no ghosts!

In regard to the string on malaria, A PH, I hunt with, has reacuring Malaria, and suffers with it horribly when he has a relaps. I have always taken Larium, and have had no ill side effects from the prophlaxis. Thank God, because I've seen some really sick people with this little bug!

I always place instructions in my passport, and in my wallet to consult a Tropical desease expert if I've fallen ill, and where I have been, including the meds I've taken! For anyone who goes to an area where tropical deseases flurish, this is a good idea.

This is the kind of string that there are no two sides to. It is important enough that it letterly could be the bar to contracting a desease, or even death if it is not taken care of quickly, if you do!